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How many of you remember that year? Wow. It's probably the most significant year in my entire life and boy do I remember it. Everything in my childhood can be divided into pre and post-1968. How I perceive things changed forever. I thought I was growing up, and maybe in some ways I was, but I was also taking on those isms that qualified me for Alanon. I started the year as a 10 year old... a quirky sensitive child living in an eccentric family. I ended it as an 11-year old "man of the house", the older of two boys in a single-mother household. There were good times before, during, and after... but after 1968 nothing would ever be the same again. As it was for our nation, and the world.
I recently compiled a DVD of photos (with music) for my mom's 80th birthday. My brother and I planned this project some months in advance, but it took on a life of its own. One of the decisions we made was to divide it into chapters, with each having it's own theme song. One unanimous decision was that one chapter would simply be titled "1968". For the theme song we chose Petula Clark's hit song "Sign Of The Times", which was popular in 68 although it may have originated earlier. We had plenty of photos from 68 to go with it - it was a great awakening, we did many new things, and took lots of pictures. What an amazing time it was. No regrets... no desire to do it over again, but the memories are far from all bad. It's all part of who I am today and who I've been ever since.
I will follow this up with a re-post of "The Great Bug-Out", the story I posted here a few years back, which took place in April of 1968.
The Great Bug Out of April, 1968 - Originally Posted to MIP in September 2006 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I was 10 years old, my parents were in the final stages of divorce although I probably wasn't aware of it. My mom had been going to Alanon for some time, and I only had a vague idea what it was for. Because she was good at keeping up a pretense of normalcy, I suppose my brother (then 7) and I knew less than we could have or should have. By this point my dad was not earning enough money to even pay for his own gin, and not even useful as a babysitter - that is when my mom decided that we'd be better off without him.
Right smack in the middle of this, dad came down with a ruptured appendix. He had emergency surgery, and spent some time in the hospital - I think it was at least two weeks. Some time in there, he was visited by an attorney friend, who happened to also be an AA member. After he got out of the hospital, he went to a few meetings but it was pretty obvious to all of us - even me - that he was still drinking, from his always nearby pint of gin.
One day after school, mom picked us up and we went on a two week adventure that to this day we refer to as the Great Bug Out. We hopped from various friends and relatives houses for a night or two, sometimes on the other side of town - each day being dropped off at school and picked up after school to be driven somewhere else, instructed NOT to go home. This I later learned was when my dad had finally been court ordered to move out... and had refused. I had never been "on the road" for any length of time before, the house we lived in was the only home I ever knew. This adventure was entertaining in its own way, but there was an element of uncertainty if we'd ever go back home.
In the middle of the Great Bug Out a major event occurred in the national news, which caused the schools to be closed for a whole week at spring break. We bugged out of town to our grandparents for another fun adventure and all of Easter week. We eventually returned home and my dad ended up spending the weekend in jail. I remember him coming by after that, wearing a suit -- and sober. He was in a very good mood... as if he had found something to give him hope. He had found a place to live and came by to get his stuff. This is one of my few memories of him sober and the person he really was.
Unfortunately, it was not to be. With very little sobriety, he expected his world to come back to him and things would return to normal as he knew it. When that didn't happen - the divorce proceeded forward, he pretty much gave up. He died 4 and a half years later.
I recently talked to my mom to see what details she remembered of this life-changing event... the Great Bug Out is one of those things that I've always defined my life by - Before the Bug Out, After the Bug Out... two different worlds.
The national news event that happened in the middle of the Great Bug Out was the assassination of Martin Luther King. The Bug Out, while some details are vague, always seemed like just a little while ago in my memory. Some time around next Easter, it will have been forty years. Yeah, time does heal a lot, if you let it work, and keep moving forward.
Anyway thanks for listening to my old story.
Barisax, Son of Clarinet & Clarinet ------------------------------------------
Footnote: the timing mentioned above is of course wrong. Bug Out has now been over 42 years ago at this writing, at the time it was coming up on 39, not 40.
-- Edited by barisax on Friday 9th of July 2010 01:32:41 PM
Strange you should post this today...I was reflecting on my mothers drinking this morning...just a glance into the past. In 1968 I was in eighth grade. I don't know when mom started drinking but in 1968 it was to elephant stage.
I read your post and thought there is another person who knows how difficult it can be. I just never thought how the years became marked in my memory according to events of my moms drinking. That thought is interesting.
MMMMMMMNNNNNNNNN i THOUGHT 1968 so Barisax is two years older than me, and married for one whole year to someone that he loves and they love him back wow that is great, me thinks there is hope for me yet x
Thanks for sharing this important milestone in your life. I also have a milestone like that, where I decided to ask my mother if I could go live with my father when I was eleven years old - because I realized my Mom's life was too crazy for me to keep staying with her. To her credit she let me go, and my older sister soon followed. So I think of my life as "When I lived with my Mom" and "When I lived with my Dad". I also think of my life with my AH in phases, "BA - Before alcoholism" "AA - After alcoholism". Now I'm entering a new phase, and I don't know where it will take me, but I'm willing to live each day of it to the best of my ability with the help of alanon.
I do remember that year, although I was only 5. It turned out to be pretty significant in my life, too, as that was the year my parents and I immigrated to this country. That meant I was separated from all the extended family members who might have been a source of support in dealing with their alcoholism. That was the beginning of my Aloneness.
Those photo compilations are really moving. I love looking at pictures of people when they were younger, in bygone years.
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Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could... Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. - Emerson
