To anyone who has ever asked me if they kept me up, to all of Matt and Hilary and Hannah’s friends, pretty much to anyone who is under the age of twenty-seven.

Many of you knew Matt’s mom, my wife, Diane, and some did not. Diane and I grew up together – I consider my life before Diane the playful years. We gave each other crisis comfort in addition to play, and we figured out together how to cope with the hard-edged stuff outside of us that we called the real world. I met Diane on the last leg of my 14,000 mile hitch hiking journey (see what I mean about play) after I arrived on my brother’s doorstep in Cambridge. I thought I was passing through town on my way back to Indiana.

When I knocked on my brother’s door at some wee-ass hour, having mooched my last ride at a rest stop on the Mass Pike , Brian didn’t answer. His Native American worshipping, left-leaning (both politically and physically), ganja smoking, self-centered mountain-man of a roommate did. Brian dodged the draft by joining Vista as had John. They met in Oregon. They both turned their backs on Vista and drove east together. I don’t remember why they chose this fair state, a girlfriend perhaps, or a dart thrown at a map? Our lives, back then, were chaotic compared to many of yours, with careers yet unknown, and the future (beyond the war) rarely considered.

Diane graduated from Wellesley College and moved to Somerville . She shared her first apartment with her college roommate, Ginger Candee, and Shirley, a friend from back home. However, that union was short-lived. When I came to town in September Ginger was already sharing Brian’s bed. Good for me because I needed a place to sleep and I moved into Ginger’s empty room. I think I thought I was always going home which is why I kept it so empty a friend referred to the style as “Early Nothingness.” Much like my bedroom today. A thin wall separated me from Diane and Rich, who was her love, and  a graduate of Fordham. He was destined to be a government lawyer, and an ex-boyfriend. Who would have guessed that this classical music-loving, rule-following, valedictorian would choose me, a long haired, bell-bottomed, rootless hippie. Like my bedroom, I haven’t changed much. Diane explained her attraction to me, “You’re not boring.” Rich was the lamppost outside, I was the unassembled parts to who-knows-what.

Shirley moved within that first year and that left Diane and me sharing our space with a succession of roommates … nine I think, only two of whom were men. Yeah, even then. When we moved to Littleton in 1978, we shared that apartment with three different room- mates, all guys this time. We lived a communitarian like with people constantly drifting in and out. We grew our first garden, and enjoyed watching the antics of the drunken college-age kids next door. Four years later, we bought our house in Acton with our friend Dan. He moved out and sold his share to another friend John, who left when he married Ruth. Finally, we had enough money to own the house without roommates.

I trust these details aren’t too boring. I think they’re important to our story. How does one house on Central Street become a place of refuge, love, joy, and shared sorrow? Most so-called hippies boomeranged back to their roots and became knockoffs of their parents. Diane and I did not. We both continued to value friends and family over our occupations and shiny objects. We all know that Diane would approve of her house transformed. Though she loathed rugs we know she would have loved the sight of the floors carpeted by your bodies.

I’m a guy from the fifties. My role models were my father who wore his belt not just to hold up his pants, and Charles Bronson who never met an emotion he couldn’t suppress, unless it was murderous rage. My parents were liberal and accepting (for example – I slept with my college girlfriend at home way back then). Neither parent seemed at ease with that word love. Diane taught me how to love. She showed me I didn’t need to keep my father’s distance from Matt’s friends. I watched Diane with so many of you : she played, she listened, she advised, and she accepted you as you are.

Now, our house is mostly just Matt and me.  I do love that, but, you know, I did love having you all share it as if it were your own home with fewer rules. Though you don’t share my last name, I feel as though you should. I’m writing this after listening to Thanksgiving night’s sounds of laughter and conversation, minus the breaking of dishes and the booming baritones on the back deck. I know you’ll be back, and I know there will be other times when I awake to find bodies strewn about in outrageous positions. I also know an era has passed. I am sad but happy. Happy for the growth I see in you all.

Ken Langer teaches music theory, lives in Maynard with his wife and daughter, and has written eighteen books on paganism. I met him at Sweet Bites, our local coffee shop. Ken usually stops in between dropping his daughter off at daycare and driving to work. He typically sits alone with his laptop and his latest inspiration. Our group, not so productively inclined, shares stories and laughter. Ken, not quite so focused as I thought, joined the verbal fun from afar and after a while, he permanently moved to our table and stopped writing.

Last June, Peter Langer, Ken’s eighty-year-old but very active father disappeared. Peter was still regularly collecting fossils, carving wood, trading stocks and running his apartments. Peter lived a solo life, so days went by before anyone noticed his absence. It seems he just got up from fixing his clock at his kitchen table and vanished. No trail. He left no credit card expenses, no bank withdrawals, no sightings of his bobbing head above the sage brush.

If you enter his home now, you will walk past a row of scruffy boots, all the same style, all near their discard date and all loosely laced, just as he wore them. Always up before the dawn, he’d step into his shoes and out into the desert, sometimes stopping to feed the neighborhood hounds or maybe bark back at them. Two hours later he’d return and greet his neighbor, Sam, who loved to tinker in his garage crafting custom motorcycles from parts he found at the junkyard.

I know what I know about Peter from Ken, from Peter’s neighbor, Sam, from Peter’s apartment manager, Mike, and the detective assigned to the case, another Mike. I flew out to Pahrump, Nevada, in late October because I knew in my heart that I could find Peter. Oh, just as I knew I could save Diane’s life by putting my hand on her forehead. I failed both times, but don’t feel a need to pat me on the head, because I know I’m delusional.

Ken, not so woven into the fabric of his fantasies, will someday fly to his father’s town, walk the desert cairn trail Sam and I found (the perimeter of Peter’s property is peppered with cairns), and then say his goodbyes. I want one last stab at finding Peter, but I can’t fly out there again. That town taps into my run-from-at-all-costs dark side. However, I can send my friend, Chris Grosjean (aka Goose). He’ll be in Tahoe in January and it’s only a short flight to Pahrump. To better understand the man he’s tracking, Goose will sleep in Peter’s house, talk to Sam and Mike, and then walk far past the end of the cairn trail, to the caves I did not have the time to explore.

I figure it’ll cost about $800.00 to send Goose and maybe a friend, if he can find another curious soul. I can’t afford all the costs; I spent enough last October, which is why I’m asking you all for small donations. People raise funds to walk across Antarctica. This trip has real meaning for lots of people. So please make a small donation, whatever you can, to Goose. On behalf of Ken, his lost dad, Peter, and myself, thank you.

Michael

All donations:

Chris Grosjean

54 Central St.

Acton, MA 01720