Chapter Five

Monday 17 Sep
After a night of no sleep, playing hooky from school and work, we went into Gosforth and knocked about before driving back to London. In a little touristy tea shop we found poesy rings that read, in mediaeval French, ‘You have my whole heart for my whole life.’ He bought them, and then and there slid one onto my middle finger- the old place for wedding rings.
‘With all my worldly goods, I thee endow,’ he murmured, closing his hand over mine, ‘and with my body I thee worship.’
On the drive back to London we reckoned that we could not get married before the weekend- unless we wanted to drive to Scotland- and so set about the bureaucracy for that, to say nothing of notifying family and friends.

Tuesday 18 Sep
On Tuesday at the registry office, giving the information for the notice of marriage, the clerk called the JP out of his office, to have us swear before him that we were of age, because I was a foreign national and still only 19, and George only 22. We swore, and George gave him his father’s telephone number. Herb was phoned, and we were given the license, which was good for 15 days. Good thing George had phoned his mother on Monday night, or it would have given the poor man a stroke. As it was he was ‘very cautious’ – displeased, in a word. But he could do nothing as we were of age. Ellen had pretty much the same response, when I phoned her, telling me I was daft to marry someone I’d known for a week. But she admitted, ’I’m not one to talk,’ for she had married Morgan knowing him for a month, and told me to bring him up. It was all very Montagues and Capulets. The only person who was completely behind us was Hamish, who asked us to come to Scotland as soon as we could. I asked George if that made him Tybalt.
‘Hush,’ he laughed, and kissed me, and laughed again.

Saturday 22 Sep
The registry office was open from 10-1 on the Saturday, so, having already gone through all the bother of changing university records, national health cards, moving house, inviting friends, we got there at half-ten. I came with all my flatmates – Hazel and Beth were weepy behind us the whole time – and George brought his three flatmates, David, and Chris, and at the last minute Hamish arrived, having been stuck on the tube. So we had a respectable wedding party. George wore a grey velvet jacket and drainpipe morning trousers with a red silk shirt. I wore my green velvet dress with the puffed organdie sleeves, and one of Ellen's Ren Faire garlands.
'You look like a Teddy boy,' I teased George.
'Fair Janet and Tam Lin,' he corrected, with a kiss on my cheek.

The ceremony itself was barebones, but indeed there were the words from the Book of Common Prayer 'with all my worldly goods I thee endow' and 'with my body I thee worship.' That had me crying, because of the resonance, but not as much as 'In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost Amen' as he slipped the poesy ring on my hand again. I could hardly do the same, I was shaking so, but I managed not to flub it. And then the words, 'man and wife' and bob's your uncle. In ten minutes, the irrevocable step was made.

Hamish sprang for a wedding breakfast for us at the Bloomsbury caf, so we carried on like the life of Reilly for three hours, with beer and whiskey and champagne. He was a nut-brown Puckish man, Hamish, with hazel eyes and hair, not quite as tall as George, with long hair and a sharp Scottish face. He wore a Ren faire shirt and green trousers, and a Green Man medallion around his neck. After a moment, I realised that he reminded me of Ian Anderson, but his vibe was totally different. He was very grounded and mellow, completely calm and joyful at once, with a roving eye and a merry laugh.

'So, wee lassie,' he said to me, holding out his hands as he came to kiss the bride, 'this is the paragon who has swept away our Geordie. You are well-named. Your light shines from you like a beacon upon the world.' He gave me a hug and a chaste kiss. 'Thank you, darlin',' he murmured, for my ears alone. 'You have saved my friend's life.' My breath caught, for deep inside I knew it was true. More than George's stories of Soho, there was a kind of desperation in his soul that would have undone him if left unassuaged. I nodded blindly. Hamish said, 'George says you're coming to Findhorn next week.'
'Yes.' On the way, we would stop and see my sister.
'We'll get you a caravan to yourselves,' he promised. 'The workshop will do you both good.' It was on transpersonal communication.
'Thank you!'
He moved on to George and they embraced like the brothers they were.
'So, you made it. Well done,' Hamish said.
George was in tears. 'Yes. Thank you for your help! And thank you for coming, brother. You know what it means.'
'I do,' Hamish glanced at me, then clapped George on the arm. 'The Spirit moves in your life, never doubt it. Just listen, and do. And never let go of her.'
George blushed and looked at me. 'I never intend to.'

I got it. Under the kind words were an admonition: Don't arse this up. Apparently, he had before. Apparently, there had been other opportunities that he had arsed up. I looked at Hamish and he nodded, tapping his nose. I understood that fidelity had been the problem, because he had not really loved them. I looked up at George, who watched this exchanged with a strange expression.
He knew that I knew, and what I knew. There was that telepathy between us again.
'He's right, you know,' he said later. 'Even at Findhorn there were girls I made just because it felt right at the time, but I was too full of myself to let go and be with it, with them, fully...' He shook his head. 'It wasn't the same. When I saw you I knew. The others... were only possibilities. I will never screw around on you baby, I made that vow to you before heaven, and you can take it to the God of this universe unbroken.'

He was not too full of himself to let go now. In less than a fortnight, he had shown me his whole soul in all its vulnerability. It was that contrast, between the strong capable man he presented himself and the tender, vulnerable lover he truly was, in the deepest sense of that term, that made him loveable. Some people might fear he was a tyrant, or over-masterful to put a kind gloss on it - Ellen among them worried that I had 'father issues' – but few of them knew how readily he cried or responded to music or a sunrise. He was much more sensitive than I was, truth to tell. He more than proved that as he laughed and cried all through our bridal night. More than his artfulness as a lover, which was considerable, it was his presence that was moving. He was so utterly responsive. If I was not head over ears in love with him before that, I certainly was then.
In the evening, of that first day, when we paused to eat, George picked up his fiddle, and sang,

Lady, are you happy, do you feel the way I do
Are there meanings that you've never seen before
Lady, my sweet lady, I just cant believe its true
And its like I've never ever loved before
Close your eyes and rest your weary mind
I promise I will stay right here beside you
Today our lives were joined, became entwined
I wish you could know how much I love you
I don't think that Hamish or Ellen or anyone had a thing to worry about with regard to George.

We developed a routine in those first days: before we got out of bed we meditated together. Sometimes it was half an hour; sometimes it was an hour or even two, if there were nothing on the docket. It was not commonly tantric, as we had done at Wasdale. We would do our sitting spooned back to front, with his hands over mine, palm to palm. We 'just breathed' – did the rounds of the guru breath from tantric Buddhism – and got high so often that we lived in an ever-deepening state of bliss.

Wales and Findhorn
Sept-Oct 1973
On Friday afternoon we drove to my sister's farm outside Caernarfon. On the way, George told me about his est experience, because I asked him how he got free of his drug habit. His frankness was astounding.
'I was at the point of slacking off and going through withdrawals simply to get the same high at a lower dose. It was a terrible cycle, but I wanted that ecstasy more than anything and I had a limited amount of money.... And then a guy in my flat – my contact, actually – had a heart attack and died, in our flat. He was 25....' He shook his head. 'I thought – pardon me – shit, that could be me!' He looked at me.
'Do you know about est?' He asked.
I smiled. 'Yeah. There were trainings in Pasadena.'
'But you haven't done it?'
'No.'
He ran a hand through his hair. 'Okay, so you know it's 60 hours and all that – the rules and such?'
I nodded. 'More or less.'
He smiled. 'So we're simpatico....' He took a breath. 'I heard about it and chose it because it seemed like an alternative to Narconon – I considered myself an atheist and just couldn't get with all that "I am powerless, I give it up to God" chat.' He laughed. 'Out of the frying pan and into the fire! Anyway, I signed up for the sessions, which were in Hammersmith, and showed up – late! I was always late in those days –' he never was late now '-and was immediately lambasted by the trainer for breaking the contract. Well, I can tell you, that didn't set well with the rebel I was. I argued with him – said that the train was late; I couldn't get a cab from the station, and what did a few minutes matter anyway? Both of the first were true, but the last was simply a justification. But, from my point of view, I had already pledged to stop using, and I showed up at all, so I thought I deserved favour for that.'
He laughed. 'The trainer told me that I was an asshole and if I wasn't going to follow the rules I had agreed to, I could leave. He also said that I was a poser and had no integrity, and if I were serious about getting clean I'd better sit down and not be such a shit. Well, that knocked me back! They actually read my dossier, and knew who was late, and called me on it.' He looked at me, shaking his head. 'No one had ever called me on anything before, because I was talented and had a temper – ha! – and they didn't want to piss me off. So there I was, the bad-boy, focus of the entire room. Sure people thought I was indeed just an asshole, and I was! But it was great for the ego. I certainly never wanted to walk into a room and not be noticed, in those days...' He ran his hand up my leg and shifted gears. 'So when you said the other day I looked like a Teddy boy, you were spot on.'

You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot
You had one eye on the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte
And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner
They'd be your partner, and...
You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You're so vain, I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? don't you?
You had me several years ago when I was still quite naive
Well you said that we made such a pretty pair
And that you would never leave
But you gave away the things you loved and one of them was me
I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee
Clouds in my coffee, and...

'For all the bad start, I was not one of the shrinking violets. When we were asked to tell our stories, I was right there with my hand up, and I told it all: how my father was distant and small-minded and oppressive, and ridiculed my creativity and abilities. I even told about hearing and seeing things that weren't there.'
'What did they say?'
He grinned. 'I was told not to be such a show-off, that nobody cared about my mystical fantasies and that I was just a poser and nobody special.'
'Wow...'
George laughed. 'No, no. It was all true. Not that I liked it, but it was all true and I needed to hear it.... I hadn't read Watts or Suzuki, so I didn't know what the lingo meant, being "nobody special", that it meant enlightenment. But I sure did need taking down a peg. And they did it!'
He sighed. 'When we got to taking apart our stories, got into what our racket was, and how we were responsible for creating our own reality, I saw that the my racket was that I was unappreciated and misunderstood. My problem was that I expected people to think I was all that because I saw things, knew things, had experiences no one else had, was very bright and talented. ' He smiled. 'The trainer said, so you think you're better than other people? I said Yes. Then he asked if that were so, why I was so miserable. Well, I lost it right there, broke down and cried in front of everyone because underneath all the bravado I felt pretty empty and fraudulent.... He told me that that was just another racket, and asked what was underneath it. Well, I didn't know, and was told to go find out.' He drew a shaky breath. 'I went home and thought about that - didn't sleep at all – and when I came back I told him that underneath was a person who just wanted to be loved.' I held his hand on my leg.

He shook his head. 'It was the first time I had ever admitted to being vulnerable. And that was pretty scary. But when I understood that I just wanted to be loved, there wasn't any drama attached to it – I meant it: I was just an ordinary being, very neutral, and I wanted love because that's what we are. I explained all this and – miracle! – the trainer smiled at me and said, "thank you, you can sit down now." I got it. I got the rest of it too, the next weekend: there's nothing to be, nothing to do, none of this drama and striving matters – all of it.' He glanced at me. 'The trouble was, how to integrate it.' He sighed. 'I've been trying to do that ever since, trying to discover what it means in practical terms. I try not to blame people for my life when it's not working. I try to have integrity and be present. But it is an everyday journey, and anytime I think I've finally got it, I know I'm on the biggest ego trip ever.' He smiled.

I considered. 'Do you think you've made any progress?'
'Oh yes.' He nodded emphatically. 'I'm not consumed by anger and self-justification now... Findhorn has helped immensely, and Hamish in specific. He keeps me on the straight and narrow.' He looked back at the dog, 'he gave me Fergus so that I should care about someone besides myself.... But, I can't rely on him, Hamish I mean. I have to be able to do it myself, every day. So that is my practise.'
And yet, you rely on me, I thought, and Hamish knows it, Hamish encouraged it. And of esoteric things, I know less than you.
George slowed and looked at me quickly, at the winding deserted road, and back again.
'I do need you,' he said, in answer to my thought. 'And you know more than you think, because you are pure.'
I swallowed. 'Aren't you afraid of some kind of unhealthy dependence?'
He regarded me seriously. 'You're much more enthralling than heroin ever was....' He ran a hand through his hair. 'Look, I know it’s transference –' His voice broke, 'but I genuinely love you, and I will do everything in my power to make you happy. I couldn't live without you, not from the moment I saw you.'
Well, I was crying too, then.

We got to Ell and Morgan's at teatime, and Fergus bounded out of the car and into the sheepfold like a blue streak. We all laughed, then Ell opened her arms and gave me a hug.
'There you are, sissy!'
I was so glad to see her! I had missed her at the wedding, but she couldn't come down because Moran was croupy. We were the same height, but Ell was softer than I, and had been before she had Moran. She had curling fuzzy long brown hair and the family blue eyes. Morgan was tall and swarthy, with crinkly black hair and a beard, and jet-black eyes. He hadn't much to say for himself ever, but he played the fiddle like nobody's business. We stood away and she turned her attention to George. I watched her visibly start and blink, before she put on her big sister guise again. She smiled warmly and took his hands.
'Welcome, George. Welcome to Myfanwy, and the family.' Her breath caught and she hugged him impulsively. I heard her thinking What would Mama think of this!

George looked at me. He heard. 'Thank you, Ellen, Morgan.' He shook Morgan's hand. Ell was crying. 'Well, I can see that you really love her,' she said, 'so I am easier in my mind.' I stood amazed. Ell had never been squidgy or sentimental, always forthright and practical, so her rush of emotion meant something
George nodded. 'Thank you.'
We went inside to a tea of hot pot and Welshcakes – what else would one eat on a sheepfarm than lamb and mutton? – and homebrewed wheat beer. Moran was put to bed, and afterward we had a jam session until midnight, interspersed with questions and answers back and forth between Ell and George. We had to leave pretty early – it was four hours to Forres - so we trudged upstairs for a few hours' sleep, tucked under eiderdown, as the temperature had dropped to a hard frost. Fergus slept at the end of the bed, as he was used to doing at home, though Ellen's dogs slept in the kitchen.

George murmured, in the sleepy frigid darkness,
'Your sister is just as I imagined.' He kissed my temple. 'I see where you get your common sense. I'm happy to have met her. Thank you, darling.'
I smiled, half-awake. 'You won't say that about Jack...'
'Likely not,' he agreed.
We made an Alpine start, getting up at three and loading the car while Ell made us a box to take along, and steamy thermos of tea and brandy.
'Just like Alberta,' she smiled, handing over the stash at the car. 'Oh! Do you remember the McKay hut, sissy?'
I nodded. 'We tried the North face of Mt Alberta,' I told George.
'We were snowed in for two days and finally it lifted,' Ellen added. 'Except Daddy didn't want us girls crossing the glacier. We rebelled and set out ahead of him and Jack.'
'But it was bad weather for ice-climbing. We only got 100 feet up the face before we had to bail.' I said.
Ell and I looked at one another and burst out laughing. It was one of our better adventures.
George smiled and shook his head. 'Girls on the rope! Come on, cupcake,' he said, opening the passenger door,' before we have frostbite.' The Austin had no heat.
Ell and I hugged and we promised to come by for longer on the return.
She crunched in her boots back to the door of the house and waved us off down her dark country road. I felt very squidgy, realising that our time would be very limited now.
'You love each other very much,' George murmured, with a glance. He gripped my leg with strong fingers.
I nodded. 'I love her more than all the rest of the family combined. We have always been close.'
'You will always be, no matter where we are,' he said. I looked at him.
'Thank you for that!'

We got to Findhorn at just before seven – George had pushed the Austin up to 80 on the deserted roads, which was rather exhilarating. He liked to drive fast. Peter Caddy was out when he arrived, in green wellies, and he gave George a big hug.
'Nice to see you, my boy,' he said warmly, with a keen look. He turned to me appraisingly.
'This is Claire,' George said hastily,' my wife.'
Peter didn't miss a beat. He wasn't an RAF officer for nothing. 'Wife?' He teased, deadpan. ' You hadn't even a girlfriend when you were last here!' He held out his hand.
'Welcome to Findhorn, young lady.'
'Thank you, sir,'
He waved his hand, 'Bah! None of that! Call me Peter.' He peered at me keenly. 'Sheena would say you were one of the Young Ones,' he murmured. Sheena, I learned, was Sheena Govan, his second wife, the famous psychic. 'You have a great spirit, but you doubtless know that.' He looked at George. 'Dashed clever of you,' he said. 'What happened?'
'I heard a voice to look up when she came into the shop,' George said plainly. 'It said that she was my path.'
'...And this was when?'
'A fortnight last Monday.' He spoke simply and forthrightly.
'Well done,' Peter said, with a smile. 'You're coming along.' He clapped his arm again. 'Well, don't let's stand out here freezing. Come inside while I make some tea. The others should be straggling along any minute.'

We went into the sanctuary, which was attached to the community centre, and sat before the range while Peter made tea. Presently, Hamish and Andy ambled in, sleepy and wearing sheepskin boots, and came awake when they saw us.
'Geordie!' Andy exclaimed. 'Och, you made it!' They hugged. Andy said 'Oh and this is the wee lassie! Welcome to you!' He hugged me too. Andy was thin with loose brown hair and a classic Scots profile.
'Hello Claire!' Hamish gave me a great hug, 'Are you biding fine?'
I nodded, and blushed.
Peter looked up.
'Oh so you've met her.'
Hamish laughed. 'That's why I went down to London... Och, Geordie, we've just time to get you settled before the meditation. Come on, lads!' He grabbed Andy's arm and the three of them went out to the car.
'I'll look after her,' Peter called.

When they were gone, he handed me a cup of tea and a boiled egg and led me over to the sanctuary which had chairs set up in a circle.
'I can see what you are,' he said appraisingly. 'But tell me about yourself. You're a Yank.'
'I am on an exchange at the Royal College of Music, from Juilliard.' It was odd to have someone regard me as other than George's 'find', and Peter's mix of avuncular concern and formality was comforting.
'Ah music.' Peter said. 'I expect you're brilliant then.'
I smiled at the teasing. 'I'm pretty good.'
'You have family here?'
My breath caught 'My sister lives in Wales. We've just come from there... I have a brother in the States. My parents are dead.'
He nodded. 'You don't seem the impulsive type. What do you hope?'
Well, that was a very direct question!
'...From George, or from life?'
He smiled. 'Very good. Either. What are your dreams? You're very young.'
I could hardly answer the obviousness of that last remark, so I considered how to put my hopes succinctly. 'I want to live a traditional country life,' I said. 'Raise animals, make things. Live off the land, and with the spirit of the land.'
He smiled. 'You're in the right place for it. I assume you have some experience with all this?'
'Some. The rest I can learn as I go. God will lead.'
'Very good.' He was silent for a while, drank his tea. 'He's very restless you know,' he said of George. 'Always seeking something out there, outside himself...' He looked at me keenly. 'But I have to tell you, I can see that something's shifted in him, so I'd guess that's your doing. What do you want from him?'

That was a very hard question. I thought and finally said. 'I don't want anything from him; I just want to be with him, be together. Where we go and what we learn are just the journey.'
'Young lady,' Peter said very seriously, 'you are a great teacher.' He finished his tea. 'But I expect that the burden of strength will be on your shoulders. He will rely on you. Can you bear it?'
There was that word again!
'We have talked about this.' I nodded. 'I don't know if I can bear it. We each have strength in different ways. I guess we'll lean on each other.'
He nodded, quietly, thoughtfully.' You'll do well,' he said at last. He patted my shoulder. 'Drink your tea. I see David and Julie coming up. I'll bring them to meet you.'
David was David Spangler, the resident god of the place, and Julie was his wife. David, for all how George and others went on about him, reminded me of Winnie the Pooh, except that his gaze was penetrating and direct. I was finding that this was the one common thread of this place. But David was not portentous.
'My fellow American!' He said, smiling, and threw his arms wide. I couldn't help giggling.
'Welcome,' he said.
'Thank you.'
'The Queen of Rods has arrived.' He said enigmatically to Julie. She poked him. 'Just repeating what John said,' he responded. He looked at me. 'You're plenty earthy, that's good. You'll need to be. George's goals are in the new paradigm. You'll need all the help Gaia can give you.'
This sybillic insight was rather unnerving. John, George told me later, was David's guide.
'Don't mind him,' Julie said quickly and gave me a hug. 'Welcome.' She was English, with a broad Manchester accent.

We sat in the community meditation, with about thirty people there. The community was at about 200 at the time. Meditating with thirty people was a very different experience to meditating with George: we settled in with blankets and shawls covering us and immediately, a great stillness arose. Instead of the mere balance, the yin-yang of masculine and feminine energies, there was a sense of gathering in grain that had been scattered, except that the grains were points of light, and as everyone dropped their outside concerns, the light suffused and radiated upwards, so that it seemed that a great column of light, like a waterfall in reverse, was rising from the centre of the room into infinity. But it was coming from infinity too – not draining anyone. It was the great cosmic cycle from the Source to the points of light and back again. It was restful and invigorating at once. I knew why George considered this his spiritual home.

Slowly, as if by mutual consent, everyone returned to their everyday consciousness, and there were hugs between those sitting next to one another. I looked at George and he had never seemed so peaceful, or radiant. We did not have to speak, but he leaned over and kissed my cheek. I leaned into him and he put his arms around me, murmuring wordlessly.
Workshop guests did not normally attend the community meditation; George was more or less regarded as a semi-permanent resident. Guests stayed at Cluny Hill – the original hotel from which Peter and Eileen had been sacked before they founded Findhorn. So we had an hour and a half to settle in properly before the workshop met there in the old ballroom. We walked through the garden over to Andy's caravan – he had taken his most necessary personal items and moved in with Hamish and his wife Joan for the week. Joan, like Hamish, was a native Scot, and from the area; they might have been siblings they were so alike in colouring, height, weight, and temperament. When I mentioned this, Joan laughed, and said 'small gene pool!'

Andy lived alone as he was not married, and his caravan was a single, and nicely, but sparsely furnished, with lots of plants hanging in the windows and a small garden out front, set in a Celtic cross pattern. There was a common room with a kitchenette, and a bedroom, the bed in which took up almost the entire space. In the common room were an eclectic assortment of instruments, ranging from a bombard, to Tibetan bowls, to a concertina. We would be right at home. In fact, George stayed with Andy whenever he was there, so for him it was home. After sorting out our things, we walked back to the community centre for breakfast – it was entirely vegetarian – and sat with Eileen and Myrtle. Eileen, as Peter had, seemed to regard George affectionately as some sort of wayward son; he was the same age as Jonathan, the Caddys' youngest, so this was perhaps understandable. He certainly treated Eileen with all the fondness of a loving son. I was grateful that Eileen simply accepted me and did not ask a lot of probing questions, as I beginning to feel rather scrutinised by everyone who wanted to know if I measured up – and I hadn't even met Herb and Annie yet! It was very noisy in the community centre, and I was unused to being around so many people and so much energy; I felt a little disorientated.

We could have taken the bus to Cluny, but we decided to walk instead. It was a long walk and took us all of the forty-five minutes left us. We held hands all the way and in the wooded part of the path George asked if I were all right.
'Tired, I think,' I admitted, 'and a little overwhelmed.'
'I thought you looked a bit peaky,' he said.
I smiled. 'It's not what you think,' I said.
He spoke softly, full of tenderness, 'and what do I think?'
I smiled again and swung his hand in mine.
'Though I shouldn't be surprised if you were,' he smiled ruefully.
'The Queen Anne's Lace works.'
'That's not what I mean..'
I shook my head, smiling, because he was not apologising.
'Is that an invitation?'
'Well we do have a long lunch break...'
I laughed. It was just the right thing to say.
'This will be intense,' he said after a bit. ' But not as intense as est. And we will be together, which is most important. I did this on my own before and it took a lot of talking with Hamish to really process it. And it is a small group – only twenty, not 200 '
'I consider myself forewarned.'
'Good.'

Behind the Story

This novel is a fairy tale in the Romantic sense, in that it seeks to explore the possibility of a life more artistic, creative, and humane. As all fairy tales of its class, it is a protest against the mechanisation of life and regimentation of people.

While the impetus of this story came from my own life experience in Idyllwild thirty years ago, the elements in it are suitably (or synchronistically) grounded in the German fin de siecle youth movement (which is the grandfather of the hippie movement) and the Arts and Crafts Movement, which gave the village its first fame in the 1920s. Belden's Pinecraft furniture was first made here, with Belden himself living in nearby Pine Cove. Idyllwild was the site of Craftsman furniture manufacture throughout the 1920s and 30s.

The area was first inhabited by white Europeans in the 1860s. Some were looking for gold. Some, like John Muir, were looking for that ineffable mountaintop experience. Logging began in the mid 1870s and the area was heavily deforested by the turn of the 20th century. There were in 1900 many remaining loggers' cabins, taken up by summer visitors, when the Inn and the Santatorium opened in the first decade of the century. Of the logging tycoons, several families rose to prominence, among them Anton Scherman, for whom Dutch Flat was named, George Hannahs, and Claudius Emerson, foresaw the rapid dead-end of logging and envisaged something else – a resort for city folks. The Hannahses and Emersons were responsible for most of the growth in the village in the 1920s and 30s, and, in the story, the area where George and Claire live in upper Dutch Flat was once part of Hannahs' Mill and later the golf course Emerson founded in the 1920s before the reservoir of Foster Lake was created. The Gregorys' cabin is similiar to one at Fuller's Mill, up in Pinewood, and to the cabin on North Circle Drive in the village, which now serves as the Idyllwild Area Historical Society Museum; both are of the same vintage.

Idyllwild remained a rather remote and sleepy mountain town through the Second World War, when military personnel were among the few visitors, due to wartime travel restrictions, the roaring business of the summer church camps and winter sports of downhill and cross-country skiing reduced to a trickle. But late in the 1940s and early 50s, help came in the two forms which would define the town until this day – the founding of Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, and the coming of the mountaineers.

Max and Beatrice Krone and others founded a summer music and arts programme in upper Strawberry Valley, with such renowned guest teachers as Pete Seeger, Ansel Adams, and Bella Lewitski. This evolved into the West Coast's version of Juilliard, a College Preparatory Music and Arts high school, now known as Idyllwild Arts Academy.

Also in the late 1950s, the Los Angeles branch of the Sierra Club discovered Suicide and Tahquitz, with the latter's world famous Lily Rock, and they declared it a perfect spot for sport climbing, being much more convenient to Los Angeles than Yosemite. They made it their base for rock climbing. In 1966, the great climber Royal Robbins invented what became known as the Yosemite Decimal System of climbing grades on Lily Rock.

In the mid 1970s, there was an influx of hippies to the area, back-to-earth homesteaders seeking a more sane and humane way to live; their presence added the conservationist live-off-the-grid element to this artistic and bible camp community.

In the late 1970s, I was one of those deeply influenced by the back-to-earth movement. I was also a bible camp habitué. My family had many times fished at nearby Lake Hemet, and we passed through the village several times on the way from Banning and Big Bear. But in the winter of 1979 I came up alone to church camp at Camp Maranatha, up the steep and winding 'scenic' hwy 243 in the pitch dark, to stumble, glad as any 19th Century traveller, into the spartan dormitory in 10 degree weather. After a day or two, being an introvert, I went on a hike in the woods above the camp and town, and there, standing in the crystalline woods, looking down on the snow-encrusted village, I had a breathtaking transformative experience; in a flash I saw, whole and clear, how life could be and how I was supposed to be, what I was about. Live off the land in a cabin in the woods in as much self-sufficiency was possible, write, make crafts for the tourist trade. The only part I missed was that it wasn't just anywhere I found myself, but here, for I truly feel at home nowhere more than in the woods, in the mountains, in the high country. Idyllwild is not called a mile-high paradise for nothing, if you love this sort of life.

More or less, I live that life today, though I live in another sleepy village on the San Mateo coast, south of San Francisco. I am an inveterate folkie still, and write and do herbs and make everything from scratch and all the rest. I have a degree in Celtic studies, play and sing folk music and dance at folk festivals, and live the ethic of the Arts and Crafts Movement. But time marches on. It is the 40th anniversary of Woodstock this year, and the 30th anniversary of the seminal visit to the San Jacintos Last year, I thought, What if I had lived this sort of life here, what would that be like? What would the townies think? Could you raise kids that way, and what would happen to them if you did? So this story was born, as a thought-experiment, in meditation, as I travelled through the woods of Golden Gate Park to work.

Subsequently, I discovered that I had created 'out of thin air' the iconic Idyllwild experience. Reading the blogs of several townies, they describe living off the grid, and being the only one to bring tofu dogs to their schoolmates' birthday barbecues. These resonances were a beautiful affirmation that it could be done, the life I saw, the 'happily ever after' of the fairy tale.

Some places in this story are very real indeed and here in the village - the Red Kettle, the town hall, the old general store, the co-op - but some are manufactured – Mosey's - there was a pub/eatery back in the day, frequented by musicians, known as the Clam Shack, but it had an, er, unsavoury reputation (no pun intended)... so not to cast aspersions on anyone who played or worked there or can remember it at all, we will quietly bypass this bit of history; the Zen Centre (the genuine article being in nearby Mountain Center) among them. There is a Karma Kagyu Buddhist meditation centre outside of town near Pine Cove, the latest incarnation of one started by the 16th Karmapa in the 1970s.; this is the school of Buddhism that I studied.

The people are mostly taken from those I know (they will recognise themselves here in disguise), but I have had the most uncanny experience of coming face to face with Joe and Maggie Wheeler and Shirley Fossie here in the village. Whether composite or actual, the characters in their incarnation here represent the true community spirit and way of life here.

Idyllwild, as Robert Smith has written, is a town 50 years in the past, in a pre-World War Two ambiance of no chain stores or franchises except the gas stations. It has changed remarkably little in the last 30 years, unlike Hemet or Palm Springs, which were also once small resort communities. It retains its integral, conservationist community spirit. May it ever be so.
May the circle be unbroken.

Kelly Joyce Neff
Idyllwild, May 2009

Chapter Twenty-Seven

September 2008 Town Meeting
After all the happiness of having them with us, in the wind-up of the Wobbly, on the docket for the town meeting, the kids had one more surprise for us. James went up to the front of the room, swinging his hands, grinning like the used-car salesman he once was long ago. Maybe years of Buddhism had made him forever merry, like the Tibetans. Anyway, he said, 'Before we get into the Wobbly, Geoff Gregory would like to share with us – Geoff.'

Geoff got up out of his chair and sauntered up to the front, sitting on the edge of table. I half expected him to say 'My name is Geoff and I am a jerk,' There was so much of the Forum ingrained in him. It made me smile.
'I'm not here to speak on my own behalf, but I will do my best to be enrolling.' That got a laugh. 'Thanks.... Most of you know me. Some of you have known me since before I was born.' He looked about the room at Maggie and Joe, James and Betsey, Mike and Karen. 'My sister Sassa and I have had a great time being home with you all this weekend, and for our family, it has been very special.'
George, beside me, clamped his hand on my leg. He raised his head, with a wistful expression. I too, knew what was coming. Geoff went on,
'Thirty-four years ago, my parents came here, very young, very innocent and idealistic, full of a vision about how they wanted to live, about how life could be; peaceful, loving, co-operative. They would be the first ones to tell you that they hadn't a clue what they were doing. They were just operating on belief in each other and in God. They came out here to live in a way that most of us couldn't tolerate today –' He glanced over at James, who was laughing. ' Okay, I daresay that many couldn't tolerate living that way back then.' He paused.

'When I was a kid, there was no question in my mind about having no electricity to speak of, no television, no hot showers, no hi-fi stereo. It was just the way that we lived; taking baths in the kitchen while the bread was baking, and running out to the john outside in minus 5 degrees in the winter. If you wanted a shower, you had to go out to the cold one outside. Nice in the summer, but not in January.' He smiled. 'I'm not going to tell you that I walked twenty miles uphill in the snow both ways to school, because you know better. But we did walk to town, every day, and came home and watered the garden and the roof and did whatever other chores there were.
'That sounds like a hard life, but I tell you that we were free. In our hearts and our minds and in what we could choose to do and be. There was a lot of love and openness and a concern about being genuine and communicative with each other. And we really could express ourselves openly, even if it was not always with love.' He looked over at George, 'Dad, I want to thank you for letting me know when I was an asshole.' There were more laughs, and George smiled, shaking his head. 'God knows I needed it.' He looked back at the group.

'Our parents inspired us, they really did, and I think that they inspired some of you, even if other people – their own families – thought they were nuts. They came here with a vision, and they lived it, they still live it. They didn't just talk about it. And that's what Wobbly's always been about – living your vision for your own life. Now, sometimes, a vision can be at odds with society, maybe even for a long time. But eventually, society catches up. The ideals that they live by are commonplace today, and even our ordinary life catches me by the heart when I am out there in the world. Ma, I can't ever see zucchini bread in Starbucks or go into a Jamba Juice without thinking of you.' There were more laughs at this, including from George. 'But there are deeper and more important things, like ecology and respect for the presence of God in every person, like knowing that we really are all one together, and what you do comes around to you again.

'Well, on behalf of my sister and our kids, - ' he waved Sassa up from her place in the front row with Jack, 'I just wanted to say how grateful I am to my parents, and to all of you...' He paused dramatically here, and his voice caught when he spoke, 'because today is their 35th anniversary, and I think that is pretty remarkable in this day and age. They're still leading us by example.' He looked at Sassa. 'Mom and Dad, we love you very much, and we want you to know that all is very very well.'
Well, that made us both laugh and cry, and there were cheers, and James came up to give the kids a hug. Then he turned round and motioned for us to stand up. We did, and there was laughter, for under his tweed jacket Geordie was wearing the shirt Geoff gave him for his 50th birthday, which read 'I'm Not Dead Yet.'
'You didn't know what we were looking at up here,' James said. 'And just so you know,' he went on when the laughs and well-wishes had died down, 'There's a cake at the back – and it's vegan.'

At the singsong after the cake was cut, we were in fine form, all of us, with Sassa and Geoff joining in on mandolin and uileann pipes. It was just old times, until Joe looked at Mike and Mike said, 'Right, now all you boys and girls, I want you to clear the floor for something special. 'Geordie, I've known you thirty-four years and you always complain that you never get to dance with your wife, so this is for you: Longways, Mary Gray.'
The old band broke into 'Reynardine', one of our old songs, and it took my breath away, for it was 'our song'. George was teary too when he looked at me, and took my hand to lead up at the top of the room.
'Come on, darling girl, this is ours.'

'One evening as I rambled amongst the springing pine
I overheard a young woman converse with Reynardine
Her hair so black and her eyes so blue her lips like ruby wine
And he smiled and gazed upon her
Did the sly bold Reynardine
'She said young man be civil, my company forsake
For to my good opinion I fear you are a rake
Oh no my dear I am no rake, brought up in Venus’ train
But I'm searching for concealment all from the judge's men
He kissed her once and he kissed her twice till she came to again
Then modestly she bade him, pray tell to me your name
'If by chance you should look for me, perhaps you'll not me find
For I'll be in my castle, enquire for Reynardine
Sun and dark she followed him, his eyes so bright did shine
And he led her over the mountains
Did the sly bold Reynardine'

Chapter Twenty-Six

Wobbly, September 2008
Geoff and Sassa came out from Los Angeles and San Diego for this year's Wobbly weekend, which surprised us, especially as they brought Jack and Gerry and all the kiddies. Geoff had at first thought to stay in one of the cabins rather than camping, but Sassa talked him out of it.
'Ma, he was like, "Sas, Ger and I can't have a year-old baby and a three year old out in the woods for three days, eating leaves and getting poison oak. And how are we supposed to change diapers?" So I told him, they'd have to change them anyway, even if they were in a cabin, and there are bins. And besides, you guys had us out here when we were babies and we lived.'
I smiled, turning off the faucet as we stood in the kitchen. 'But you knew not to eat leaves, except from the garden. And apart from the park, I don't think that Rachel and Dylan have been outside since they were born... Don't tell Gerry I said that.'
She laughed. 'Ma, you rock!' She picked up her keys from the counter. 'I'm going over to Joe and Maggie's to rescue them from the kids. We'll see you at dinner. Love you Mommy!'
She walked through the house and I heard her calling to George in the workshop were he was sorting our camping gear, 'See ya, Daddy!'

We loaded our instruments into the truck, then went back to water the garden one last time and get the dog. Boz was straining at the lead as we glissaded down the hill.
'He hasn't shown this much life in a while,' Geordie said.
'He knows there's a barbecue.'
'Mm, broiled tempeh!'
I laughed. 'Oh James'll have steaks, he always does.'
We got to our communal camp in Buckhorn and set up our lean-to, rolling out the sleeping bags to make a nice sitting space, and Boz's zabuton. Betsey called out across the clearing, 'Still using any excuse to break out the climbing gear!' Our handmade Whelen lean-to had been the subject of many jokes, mostly revolving around duct tape, but it worked. The first time Geoff saw it, he said, 'Hey I saw one of those at REI for three-hundred bucks.'
'I think this cost about ten,' George said.
'You and Bear Grylls, Dad,' Geoff shook his head.
George asked me who that was, and I shrugged. We asked James and he laughed,
'Some guy on television who shows you how to be a survivalist – is dropped into extreme conditions with a knife and not much else. He's climbed Everest a couple of times; once with a paraglider.'
'Sounds like a compliment to me,' George said.

Jack and Sassa arrived and set up their four-man tent next to us. I don't know if she shooed Eldon and Marya in our direction, but they came running over and plopped themselves down on our sleeping bags.
'Hello, Nana!' Marya said. She reached out and hugged my leg.
'Hello baby! Did you have a nice time at grandma's house?'
'Yup,' she said. ' We pwayed in the spwinkler.'
'Ooh!' I said, 'what a nice day for it.... Eldon, what have you got there?'
He had a bilbo-catcher, which he was studiously trying to win at. He held it out. 'It's a bilboquet,' he said earnestly. 'They were made during the Civil War. Mommy got it for me when she was working on Cold Mountain.' He was a very bright, but very serious child, with language far beyond his age. He wasn't very good with people, he didn't pick up their clues, and sometimes I wondered if he wasn't an Aspie. But maybe he just spent too much time around adults.

George came back from helping light the grills.
'Well hello, sonny boy! ' He said to Eldon, leaning down with his hands on his knees. ' I haven't seen one of these in ages.... Hello Mari!' He kissed the top of her head.
'Pappa!'
Eldon explained again what the bilbo-catcher was, and how the soldiers in the war used to carve them in camp. George listened carefully, and when the boy got to this part, he said, 'Oh, wait a moment.' He dug in his rucksack and pulled out a suede bag.' These are for you.' Inside the bag were hand-carved dominoes from white birch, beautifully made, and the dots painted in different colours of enamel. Eldon examined them, each one in turn, and said, 'These are very historically accurate, Pappa. Thank you.'

Geoff and Gerry arrived then, Geoff wearing an expedition rucksack and the baby, while Gerry had a couple of daypacks and Rachel by the hand.
'Hi Ma,' he said. 'We made it!'
'I see. Hi Gerry. Geoff, you look like Nanook of the North!'
'Hi Geoff,' George said. He peered round the baby. 'So did you get that Nighthaven?' Geoff had been looking at an expedition shelter in a catalogue.
He grinned. 'Nope. I made a tarp tent from ripstop.'
Gerry cocked her head. 'Who?'
'Okay we... Okay, Gerry did all the sewing, but I put in the grommets and designed it.'
George rubbed his hands, smiling, 'So let's see it!'
I shook my head. 'Boys and their toys!' I said to Gerry. 'Geoffy, give me that baby so he doesn't end up in your rucksack.'
Geoff unsnapped the baby and handed him over like an offering. ' Thanks, Ma.' George took Gerry's packs and the two of them went off to set up their camp.

In camp that night we all sat around the lanterns singing. It was too hot for a campfire, and they hadn't allowed them for several years in any case, but it was pitch black out at Buckhorn at night, too dark to see to play, so lanterns it was. It was great fun, but I had a teary moment when I realised that, ranged about us, was our family, in more than merely the old close friends and community sense. We were deeply interwoven in each other's lives now, by blood and bonds of love.
' I was singing with my sisters
I was singing with my friends
And we all can sing together
‘Cause the circle never ends'

Oh, this was going to be one heck of a weekend!

In the morning, we walked up to the meditation with Joe and Maggie and Sassa and Jack and the kids. A dew had fallen in the night and the temperature was fairly tolerable. When we got to our place, Geordie took off his tevas and stretched in the sun salutation before sitting down in Padmasana. 'The ground is harder than it used to be, for sleeping on,' he murmured.
I smiled,' But you can still fold yourself up like a pretzel, Pappa.' I put an arm about him as he sat next to me. Sassa on the other side of him was doing the same thing, cracking her neck when she finished. Lithe and limber, it was her everyday routine. I felt a rush of air behind me and looked up. There was a baby face.
'Hello, Dylan!' I reached up. 'Good morning Geoffy. Nice to see you!' I took the baby from him and he gave me a kiss.
'Good morning, Mommy.'
'We didn't expect you up this early.'
'Yeah well... Forum time!' He grinned. He sat down behind us. 'Hi Dad.'
'Hey Geoff, what it is.'
I didn't ask where Gerry was, but she came up too later, with Rachel clinging to her like a monkey. 'Sorry,' she said. 'We had a potty emergency.'

We all settled down into the meditation, chanting Om Nama Shivya, and I found myself swaying with the baby as I held him firmly by the leg. He was just starting to walk, and I didn't want him to go scooting off, but he didn't. He was as blissed out and entranced as my own kids had been by our meditation. Geoff behind me was rumbling like a Tibetan monk, and I found it very sweet. He had liked to do that when he was a kid. Was he dropping his high-energy, worldly persona here, and settling back into deep-ingrained habits? Again, I felt a rush as I had last night, time and Life moving me. The meditation settled into silence, and we all breathed together, three hundred and fifty people of one heartbeat, one breath, one mind.

I went off to give my weed walk through the woods, and Geordie went to Sas's yoga class. They were lined up under a marquee at the edge of the woods where it was cool. The ground had been laid with moving blankets from the set-up vans. Sassa stood up at the front, all long arms and legs, her blonde curls bound with a scarf.
'Namaste!' she said, smiling and bowed to them all, beaming loving-kindness. The greeting was returned.
'Before we begin, I have a little story I'd like to share with you: I've done a lot of different kinds of yoga: bikram, ashangta, kripalu, kundalini, iyengar, sivananda. But my basis was in hatha yoga, and everything I know about that, I learned from my Dad. And I'm telling you that because he's standing back there –' She smiled and peered round one of the front students, and people turned around to look as well, with smiles and greetings.
'Now, I have what you might call a very exciting or a very stressful job, depending on your point of view, so yoga and mediation are the basis of my life. They are the point from which everything else flows... When I was little, my Dad explained to me that the point of yoga was to open up the body to be able to sit, to meditate, so the basis of yoga is spiritual enlightenment, to live in consciousness and oneness with All That Is. It is a lifeway, not just a form of exercise...'

She moved into the mountain pose, and her group of students with her. For an hour they went through a sequence, then moved into challenging poses, with Sas moving among them gently correcting their various parts to be in balance. Late in the hour, those who were willing were struggling with Vrischika-asana – a very gymnastic pose, balancing on the forearms, with the legs over the head, backwards. But George was not struggling. For all he might complain about the hard ground, he was still quite strong and limber. He was shaking a little in holding the pose, and breathing deeply, but he was in perfect control and concentration.
Sas smiled as she came up behind him.
'No fair, Daddy,' she whispered, laying her hand between his shoulder blades. 'Home field advantage.'
He smiled, and then a bubble of laughter escaped.' Sh!' He breathed shortly.
'Steady on,' she smiled, and left him to it.

**
On Saturday our whole family went to Geoff’s workshop on human potential, and took up the entire front row. It was very cool to see him in action as a trainer, for he really was giving them a mini-course in Forum/est –speak. Since we got the house, we had a plaque hanging in the kitchen that, without jargon, was the essence of est:
‘ Have integrity: Do what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it, If you cannot, communicate as soon as possible and repair.
‘Give up being right, even when you know you are
‘Be straight in your communication, and take what you get
‘Acknowledge your fears, then act as necessary
‘Give up the interpretation that there’s something wrong
‘Give up trying to “get somewhere”. Be entirely present in the present moment.
‘Share your experiences in a way that others are touched, moved and inspired.’
‘Give up being right, even when you know you are’ always got a laugh from people visiting us, mostly at the spouse’s expense. It would be interesting to see how Geoff presented the philosophy he had been raised with, distilled through his own experience.
‘We’ll make him nervous,’ Geordie murmured.
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘He talks in front of hundreds of people, at LMF and at work.’ Geoff worked in development at Microsoft.
‘Not those who know how he brushes his teeth,’ he returned. He looked back over his shoulder as Geoff came up to the front.

‘Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Geoff,’ he looked over at us, with a smile, ‘and I am a jerk. Now, you might be asking yourself what the use is of taking a workshop from a jerk, and ordinarily, I would agree with you. If this were a course in sustainable energy, that could be dangerous.’ There were laughs. ‘But in this case, of human potential, consider me the Fool, who has made all of your mistakes for you and is here to tell you about them. A wise man can learn from a fool, right?’
I sighed and George held my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. A kinder gentler est indeed… and so like another day, in this very spot. I was in tears again.

‘Now, before I begin I want to tell you a little story,’ he looked at us, and Gerry, ‘ and I hope it’s not the kind of story that most of us have – our story of all the rotten things that have happened to us and how unappreciated and abused we have been. I want to tell you how I discovered this information that I am going to share with you, to show you that I’m not just being modest in saying I’m a jerk.’ He looked out over the group.
‘I was something of a problem child,’ there were laughs at this, from the back, laughs of sympathy and camaraderie. ‘And when I was fifteen I got into some really heavy drugs,' there were murmurs. ‘Yeah, you know it… Well, my parents and my sponsor Dave-' he looked up, at the back, 'Hi Dave!… had an idea for me, and thank God, I had just enough brains to agree to it, because it changed my life. They suggested that I do a teen programme in Palm Springs, a really intense weekend course – and it got me in touch with parts of myself that I had covered up.’ His voice broke and his eyes filled with tears. He did not apologise, as people out in the world would.
‘Now, I tell this story a lot as a motivational speaker, and it always gets to me at this part, but it’s especially moving today, because my parents are sitting over there, and they know it all.’ He looked at us with a teary smile.

‘In the middle of the weekend,’ he paused, ‘I realised that I had come into this life with a lot of anger at the world. You can say it was my karma if you like. But I focused it on my parents, especially my father, when it was my stuff and really didn’t have anything to do with them.’ He paused again, and tears slipped down his face. ‘What is more, in the sessions, because of what was said, I realised that my parents lived this information, and that they had been giving it to me my whole life,’ he paused. ‘With love… in freedom… and that all the stuff I was carrying around inside of me just didn’t matter. I didn’t have to carry it around… I could let it go… and be free.’ He drew a long breath. ‘And that is what they wanted for me, that is what they always wanted for me.’ He looked at Geordie for a long moment before continuing. The love and presence between them was palpable.
‘Now, my family know all of this, as I say, because they were there. But I want to tell you people that just because you give up being a jerk doesn’t mean you still don’t need to grow…’ He looked over at us, and Gerry again. ‘I would like to share with you that I realised something this weekend -' his voice caught. ‘That I was full of excuses about why I hadn’t come here much lately, even though it’s only two hours away… I grew up here. I learned to walk on these very paths… and I realised that I was keeping part of myself apart, a part of my life apart from my wife-' Gerry was nodding her head vigorously, tears running down her face- ‘even though I married her because she’s from here too and understands how I grew up.’

He drew a breath, ‘I realised that I was keeping her and our kids apart from the Whole Being because I wanted to hold onto my sense of being different… of being special.’ He smiled at George. ‘The one thing I fought with my Dad about when I was a teenager was how we were different than other people…. Well, I am a jerk, and I like to think I’m special, and I shut myself off from and kept my wife and kids out of a part of my life that is the core of who I am, so I could maintain my separateness, my uniqueness. But I tell you, that’s not the way to do it.’ He looked out at the group. ‘So, learn from this fool….’ He drew a long breath. ‘ We’ll talk about how in a little while. But right now, I’d like you to break up into groups of four or five,’ he glanced at us, ‘ if you can, and share what has come to you, what your story might be, and what you’d like to let go of, to be free.’
The crowd, who were wide open now, turned to each other, and there was the great babble of people sharing. Geoff came over and put his arms around Gerry and they were both crying.
‘I’m sorry, baby,’ he said. The rest of us waited until they were ready to join us then had a tremendous group hug.
‘I’m so proud of you, Geoffy,’ Geordie said, clapping him firmly in an embrace.
‘I love you, Dad. I never told you that you gave me my way of life, though I tell other people all the time.’
‘Just live it, just live it. It’s all I want for you.’
Geoff moved on to Sassa. ‘Sas, you got it sis,’ he said smiling. ‘ You’ve always had it and never lost it. I love you.’
‘There’s always room for a breakthrough, bro,’ She smiled.
'Jack,' Geoff said, '...man you are a rock. I just wish I could be like you.' Jack smiled, his angel's smile, lighting up his fair face. 'You are, brother, you are,' he said. 'Deep down inside. I see it.'
He came to me. ‘Mommy.’ He was teary again. ‘Mommy, you never criticised me, even when I hurt you and was an ass. You always saw the possibility in me.’
‘Oh Geoffy!’ that old estie word was undoing.

But he had to get the group back in order. There was work to do. He clapped his hands twice and went back up to the front.
‘Thanks for sharing, people, ‘cause that’s what it’s all about.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘So, how do we do this? How do we be free and keep from being jerks, now that we’ve identified the ways in which we are? There are a couple of ways, and I’ll share them with you.’ He glanced at us. ‘But in the interest of transparency, I have to tell you that I grew up with these ideas on our kitchen wall, so maybe that’s cheating… If they seem a little hard to understand, we’ll talk about them.
‘The first is to have integrity. Now, what is that? There are a couple of definitions and I want to be clear about what I mean. It can mean being a moral person, which I kind of mean. It can mean having your outside activity and your interior mindset match – and I kind of mean that, but that’s a slippery slope. Taken at face value like that, it would mean that Hitler had integrity.’ There were laughs. ‘So what do I mean about integrity? It’s very simple: Do what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it. If you cannot, communicate as soon as possible and repair. That means, don’t be a Yes man and say you’re going to do something when you know you won’t. And if something comes up- something really important – not that you just don’t feel like it – and you can’t do whatever you said you would – let people know as soon as you can, don’t just be a jerk and blow it off.’ There were laughs again.

‘Now, let me tell you, there are lots of ways to work excuses with this one, and believe me, I know them all, starting from when I wanted to hang out in town as a kid after school. You see, we didn’t have a phone at our house,’ he smiled at the gasps, because everyone had cell phones,
‘And my parents still don’t, so it was easy to say “yeah but…”. But the truth is there are ways of getting in touch with people, even if it means walking.’ He looked at me, and Jack. ‘My mother made it to my brother in law’s birth, when they had no phone- they still have no phone! - And there was three feet of snow on the ground and we lived three miles out of town on an unimproved road.’ More gasps and laughter. ‘Yeah, it’s kinda like that around here. What I mean is, if you want to do something, you will, and if you don’t, or really can’t, say so up front.

‘That brings up another way to be free: Be straight in your communication, and take what you get. That doesn’t mean to be ratty to people and not care if you hurt them. There are ways of telling the truth that are not scathing. It means, don’t lie, and don’t just tell people what you think they want to hear, or say one thing when you really mean another. It spares a lot of trouble if you do that. Now, I’d say that most of the problems of relationships come because people don’t do that.' Lots of people were nodding. ‘The other part of that is to realise that your feelings about things belong to you, nobody makes you feel them, so you can’t go around saying “so and so did this to me”, even though we do. Now, if you tell someone the truth, even in a good way, or share something about yourself or your life, it doesn’t mean that people are going to like it. They might feel scared or threatened, or think you’re full of beans.' He looked over at George. ‘ So if they give out to you, in whatever way, don’t argue with them or try to change their mind, just yet. Just listen to what they have to say, because it really pisses people off if they think you’re not hearing them. Mostly people just want to feel heard.’ Women in the group were nodding, and there were a lot of ‘yeah, that’s right,’ comments.

‘This is hard to do,’ Geoff acknowledged, 'because so often we have a game on, an agenda. But if you want to be free, you’ve got to give up being right, even when you know you are, and give up the interpretation that there’s something wrong.' There were a lot of rueful laughs at that. 'I admit that I'm not very good at this part. Oh I do so want to be right! And because I have a specialised knowledge in my field, it's really easy to be critical and see where things are wrong – and take that into the rest of your life. But it is what it is, plain and simple, and if we give up on being right, then we open up a space where communication can happen, and gee, maybe we might learn something! Maybe we might connect with people.' People were laughing.
'But for me, the hardest part has always been the next bit, that is to give up trying to “get somewhere”. Be entirely present in the present moment. I always had dreams that I was spinning out of the future and what could be, and was rarely present when I was a kid.' He glanced at George, 'It caused a lot of accidents and misfortune.... I think, for my own life, I can see the wisdom of my parents' way of life – it's much easier to be present when you are not distracted by what's on your blackberry, the television and your iPod, all at once. I mean, there comes a point when there's too much input, too much information.' He ducked, mugging, as if he were looking for God to strike him dead. 'I work in IT,' he said conspiratorially. 'Them's fightin words, heresy.' There were roars of laughter. 'That's just so you know, Mom and Dad: I finally got it.' Geoff was smiling. Like a new-born babe.

He paused. 'So you see how with simply sharing how it really is, you can move people, so that they are touched and inspired.' He looked over at George and his voice broke and tears filled his eyes. 'And you can change people's lives...' He looked out over the group then. 'Maybe even your own... Thank you so much for being here, all of you.' People cheered and stomped for a while. 'Now,' Geoff went on, 'I am sure you all have identified your very own sticking points. If you'd like to break up into your small groups again and share, that would be great. I'll be around to answer questions. '
And so he was, with grace and gentleness and mastery. When he got to the back of the room, he and Dave Morrisey exchanged a long long hug. Our Geoff had made it. He had become the person he came to this world to be, at this weekend. It was so beautiful. I knew that would see a lot more of him now.

**
On Sunday afternoon, between the lunch and dinner crowd, I went to Sassa's workshop on becoming vegan, in part to support her, but also to see what she said, because that journey had been so much a part of our lives. She had got permission from the kitchen and the festival to hold it there, and there were about a dozen or so of us who ranged around the big table in the centre, where I had so often mixed fillings for piroges, or made biryani, or chopped vegetables.
'Oh Ma!' Sassa cried, and hugged me. 'Okay everybody,' she said to the group 'I have to confess, I am a poser here: This is my mom, and she knows more about how to transit to veganism than I could ever learn. Sit down, and I'll tell you a little story.' She waved them to the stools that had been set up.
'I became a vegan when I was four, because that's what my Daddy was, and I wanted to be just like him...' She smiled. 'My mom had challenge enough just living, 'cause we made all our own butter and cheese and yoghurt – with no electricity and no magic packets of starter from the health food store – from our own goat's milk, whom she raised from a kid.
'I never realised what work it was to make seitan – wheat gluten – and tempeh, until I tried it myself in my kitchen in Century City. I thought, Heck, my ma makes this all the time, it can't be hard! Well, it was a mess let me tell you, so I gained a profound respect for the kind of patience and attention it takes to make protein alternatives. It was a really Satori experience.' The group, who included three men, laughed.

'I don't want to put you off, because patience and attention is really all it takes. The rest, fermentation and food combining, is really quite simple if you follow a few basic rules –' She launched into teaching them about tempeh and gluten-making, and which milk substitutes were most palatable and so on. As I listened, and as we worked on a basic seiten, I was very impressed with her knowledge and the experimentation that she had done, She talked about raising kids as vegans and how much arable land it actually took to raise a child that way rather than as a vegetarian, and gave out the nutritional scores for everything. My artistic child was speaking pure science, showing a giftedness she rarely expressed.

'You should write a book, Sas,' I told her, as we walked over to the meadow to meet the guys for the earth ball game. 'On veganism with kids. It would be very helpful for people.' She squinted at me over her sunglasses. 'Oh my gawd, Ma! I was just talking with Jack about that this morning! Hello, universe! ' She hugged my arm. 'You are so in tune, Mommy!'
I smiled.
'You're a lot braver than I was, you know,' I said. 'I was scared to death I would kill you both if you didn't have eggs and dairy. I believed all that about B12 and kwashiorkor.'
She laughed. 'And you let me become a vegan when I couldn't say my S'es!'
'Blame your dad,' I said. 'He said it wouldn't hurt to try.'
'And you just went right along with him because he said.' She laughed again.
'Well, I figured he knew what he was talking about. Geordie knows everything.'
She stopped cold, and stared at me with tears in her eyes.
'What?'
'You still say that, after all this time... Wow, that is so beautiful.'
'You will too, Sas,' I smiled. 'Jack is a jewel.'
She breathed deeply, looking out to the trees before us. 'I know. I know.'

That night at our camp singsong, Geoff, who had been sitting next to Gerry in the jam, when over to Sassa and sat down next to her. It was musical chairs for a moment while everyone rearranged themselves. Then, smiling round the circle, on five-string guitar and banjo, they began in a beautiful harmony,
‘You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.
’Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

’Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.
’And you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.
’Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.
’Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.’
Even Joe was crying at the end of that. We were all in such a state of love and gratitude that we broke up the jam and the group became a mass, as we wandered around hugging everyone. At one point, Anne and Maggie and I put our heads together like the weird sisters we were in an embrace. The grannies.
‘Who’d have thought it, all those years ago,’ Maggie said, laughing and sniffling, ‘that we’d be here, the crones together. It’s been such an awesome trip.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Oh I love you guys so much!’

Finally, our own little family came together, Geordie and me, and Geoff and Sass, and Jack and Gerry and all the kids. We surrounded the children and swayed together, and a hum arose. Everyone was crying. And it was beautiful. Then, there, in the middle of the night, we cleared out the chairs and cushions and did the Whitsun Morris dance, the whole lot of us.

Chapter Twenty-Five

September 1997
Like Sassa, at the School of Music and Arts Geoff studied graphic design as his speciality. Unlike Sas, who chose hands on graphics illustration for film production as her media, Geoff chose CGI. It was not a surprise, for when he was sixteen he built a ham radio over the winter in the workshop, and was very happy to have news and communication from all over the world. The noise factor- a potential source of conflict with George as it was being built - was solved simply and without fuss by a pair of headphones. He had become quite the technology nerd, which we found very ironic, but his maths had always been good, and in this sphere he had no problem at all paying attention. When it came time for college, he applied to San Diego State in their computer science programme.

Geordie said, ‘I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. His whole life he has been trying to make up for lost time and experience,’ He looked at me. ‘Matt Carberry.’
I nodded.
He looked thoughtful. ‘It a fairly decent illustration of how personal karma functions, actually. What you miss in one life – in his case life itself and time – you make up for in the next.’
Their relationship had got so much better since Geoff did the Forum; there was a sense of co-operation and they went climbing together frequently, which engendered a profound camaraderie as only climbing can. When Geoff did the Stairway to Heaven and the Green Arch on Tahquitz, both classic climbs of some difficulty, he won George’s complete respect.

So our Geoff was going out into the world. On Saturday, he would finish loading up his Golf and make his way down the mountain to San Diego State. We were worried about him, for he was still only seventeen – and not completely self-controlled. At the Friday night jam towards the end of the night, Geoff, his quirky antique five-string guitar in hand, was sitting across from us next to Joe. He leaned over and whispered something to him. Joe nodded, looked at us, and picked up his bass. He and Geoff began to play a familiar tune, and Geoff sang out in his beautiful voice one of Geordie's songs,

'My name is Jamie Raeburn, in Glasgow I was born
My place and habitation I'm forced to leave with scorn
Frae my place and habitation, it's I must gang awa'
Far from the bonnie hills and dales of Caledonia

'It was early on one morning, just by the break of day
The turnkey he came to us and unto us did say
Arise you hapless convicts, arise you one and a'
This is the day you are to stray from Caledonia

'We all arose, put on our clothes, our hearts were full of grief
Our friends who stood around the coach could grant us no relief
Our parents, wives and sweethearts too, their hearts were broke in twa
To see us leave the hills and dales of Caledonia

'Farewell my dearest mother, I'm vexed for what I've done
I hope none cast up to you the race that I have run
I hope God will protect you when I am far awa'
Far from the bonnie hills and dales of Caledonia

Farewell, my honest father, you were the best of men
And likewise my own sweetheart, it's Catherine is her name
No more we'll walk by Clyde's clear stream or by the Broomielaw
For I must leave the hills and dales of Caledonia

Midsummer 1998
As Sassa and Jack had gone off in such different directions to school – he to UC Davis to study sustainable agriculture – and were moreover of diametrically opposed personalities, he being as still and silent as she was restless and voluble, we were all rather surprised when they hooked up at Wobbly in 97. They had grown up together, sure, running with the pack of kids, but never seemed any closer than the rest. But at the weekend hook up they did, and by the Sunday were sitting spooned together in the meditation, which made us smile. Sas had another semester still at UCLA, but Jack moved out there with her, gave up his job with the county and all. Joe wondered what he would do in the Big City, but we soon heard that he was working at the Odwalla plant in their development department. So all was very well indeed.

In May, Sassa graduated, with a job at Miramax ready and waiting, and in June they came home for their wedding at the Midsummer festival. They had the Unitarian Universalist minister from San Jacinto marry them, and the eclectic nature of it made us in-laws laugh. The question had gone round at the dinner at the town hall, what religion we all were, that they picked a Unitarian.
‘Reformed Baptist,’ said Joe, deadpan, but his eyes twinkled.
‘Presbyterian,’ Maggie said.
‘Roman Catholic,’ I said, ‘lapsed.’
‘How are we even friends?’ joked Maggie. ‘We should be fighting like the Hatfields and the McCoys.’
‘Anglican,’ said Geordie. ‘’Very lapsed.’ He smiled at the laughter that provoked.
‘Well, shoot, with that lot, they couldn’t have picked anything else,’ said Joe. ‘We’ve got the World Parliament of Religions right here.’

The were so adorable; Sassa in a floaty gauze dress and Jack in an Indian shirt and khaki shorts, both blond and blue-eyed – like a pair of Hunt’s angels announcing the Triumph of the Innocents. It was weird to hear ‘Asgard and John,’ because nobody had ever called them that.
‘How the time does pass,’ George murmured to me as we sat down on the lawn for the communal cider and cake-sharing.
‘Do you feel it?’
He smiled down at me with that intense, timeless gaze. ‘Not a bit…. But this does make me realise it. It’s all quite amazing, life.’ He kissed my temple.
**
Millennium Wobbly, 2000
Geoff and Gerry were both home from school all summer that year, and we knew that something was up because she came with is to the Summergrass bluegrass festival, even though she didn’t play. She also came to Strawberry. ‘His groupie,’ Geordie said, during our break, when the two darklings were getting very cosy at the concessions.
‘Ah, you have to be ware of groupies,’ I returned.
He shook his head. ‘Naughty girl, you don’t know where that leads.’
I looked up at him with mock innocence. ‘Do I not, good my lord? Tell me.’
I got him with that. ‘Claire…’ he murmured.
When we returned from our break, we launched into ‘John Barleycorn’ as a round. It was always popular, especially after lunch.

‘There were three men came out of the west, their fortunes for to try
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn should die
They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in
Threw clods upon his head
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn was dead

‘They've let him lie for a very long time, 'til the rains from heaven did fall
And little Sir John sprung up his head and so amazed them all
They've let him stand 'til Midsummer's Day 'til he looked both pale and wan
And little Sir John he grew a long beard and so become a man

‘They've hired men with their scythes so sharp to cut him off at the knee
They've rolled him and tied him by the waist serving him most barbarously
They've hired men with their sharp pitchforks who've pricked him to the heart
And the loader he has served him worse than that
For he's bound him to the cart

’They've wheeled him around and around a field 'til they came unto a barn
And there they made a solemn oath on poor John Barleycorn
They've hired men with their crabtree sticks to cut him skin from bone
And the miller he has served him worse than that
For he's ground him between two stones

’And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl and his brandy in the glass
And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl proved the strongest man at last
The huntsman he can't hunt the fox nor so loudly to blow his horn
And the tinker he can't mend kettle or pots without a little of barleycorn’

Sassa and Jack came home in the middle of September, for Wobbly and to have her baby. She was due around the 18th, but Maggie and I didn’t think she would go that long, because she was little and neither she nor Jack had been late.
‘Look out for that swimmy hole,’ Maggie called, as they went across the road for the trail to the lake. ‘There’s babies in it!’ We sat in camp on the Friday night, sprawled on camp chairs in the heat. It had been a long, tiring, but fulfilling day, with jewellery and colourwork classes, spiritual attunements, a herbal workshop, Jack’s talk on sustainable agriculture, and massages; and as always, too much food, much laughter and many hugs.
Jack turned his head and waved at her in a ‘go way’ gesture, smiling.
‘I can’t believe I’m a granny with that one,’ Maggie said, shaking her head.
I laughed. ‘You already have five!’
‘Yeah.’ She stretched her arms over her head. ‘But he’s my baby.’
‘Sas said they’re having a baby party at your house,’ I said after a while.
‘Well, you’re invited!’
I smiled.’ That was the invitation. It sounds like the whole town is invited.’
‘Only our family,’ Maggie joked.
Anne came over from their tent down the opposite end of our communal camp.
‘There’s watermelon over at Betsey’s,’ she nodded her head.
‘Oh, I could use it!’ I said.

After the last puja, the men sat around in our communal camp, drinking beer and having an informal jam. Geoff was on the edge of it, half paying attention, half trying to make out with Gerry, except that it really was too hot.
Mike said, grinning 'We're a bad influence on the kid.'
George was lounging on his camp chair, bare legs stretched out, barefoot. He squinted. 'Eh?'
'You know, man,' Mike said, 'like-' And he broke into the unmistakeable chords of 'Baby, when I think about you, I think about love...'
When the song was new, it got a lot of play at Wobbly. George laughed and leaned over to pluck Geoff's five-string out of his fingers. 'Ready when you are,' he said to Mike, who startled. 'Oh come on!' They had jammed to rock and roll at Mike's since our first summer, after Mike at the Friday night jam had begun a phrase of Aerosmith and George finished it, to Mike's astonishment and delight.
Now, Mike shrugged, grinning. 'Right...' And away they went.

'Baby, when I think about you, I think about love
Darlin, I don't live without you And your love
If I had those golden dreams Of my yesterdays
I would wrap you in their heaven till I'm dyin' on the way

'Feel like makin'
Feel like makin' love
Feel like makin' love to you

'Baby, if I think about you I think about love
Darlin if I live without you I live without love
If I had the sun and moon They were shining
I would give you Both night and day love satisfyin'

'Feel like makin'
Feel like makin' love
Feel like makin' love to you

'And if I had those golden dreams Of my yesterdays
I would wrap you in their heaven til I'm dyin' on the way...'

Geoff just sat there dumbstruck as they played, watching his father jam to what he obviously considered a really raunchy song. But Geoff had only discovered love, not invented it. We could tell him a thing or two, we oldies. The riffs were awesome, Joe was cooking on his harmonica, and everyone was laughing and giving high fives at the end. George handed Geoff back his guitar, laughing. 'I'm not dead yet!' he said. When Geordie's birthday came around in March, his 50th, Geoff gave him a t-shirt with that printed on it.
I could see why Geoff was embarrassed: he had just found a girlfriend, and was over-run with all sorts of feelings; Sassa was to have her baby any day now, and it was a little weird at twenty to think of your parents – who were about to be grandparents – as still making it, or even wanting to. We certainly never thought that our parents did. George said, 'I'm very sure that mine didn't!'

**
George's 50th Birthday March 21, 2001
That was a bit of a sad day because George decided to cut his hair – or, I should say, he decided to have me cut his hair. His insistence was all the more startling as he was adamant about me not cutting mine - anything shorter than waist-length, he vetoed every time.
'I don't want to be absurd,' he said, running his hand through his loose hair. 'I don't want to look like Jerry Garcia.' He was going a bit grey in silvery threads, which I actually found rather sexy.
'Are you sure you don't want to wait until summer?' I asked, only to buy time, hoping he would change his mind. But he insisted, so he sat in the hanging chair in the common room and with great reluctance, I took my scissors to his beautiful curls.
I had never seen him with short hair, and he said it had not been since he left school when he was seventeen. He looked so... Roman or Greek that it was a shock. 'Pericles,' I said.
'You flatter me, darling.'
But he did.
When we went to the town meeting that night, there was a hush when we walked in. Maggie said, 'for a minute I thought you were stepping out, girlfriend.' She looked up at Geordie. 'You know, the first time I ever saw you I thought you were hot, but this is a whole new perspective.' She winked at me. George actually blushed.

Chapter Twenty-Four

June 1995
Geoff as he grew into his teens became increasingly unhappy and distant, and he would not tell us what bothered him. It was all very well to say 'Matt Carberry', which became a kind of code for 'he'll get over it.' But we had to do something to help him, if only we could know what it was. Our boy was falling apart before our eyes.
The worst of his falling apart came in the middle of June when George went into his room to put his laundry on the bed, and found a syringe wadged under the pillow. He came out to the common room where I was still folding laundry, white, with that thunderous look.
‘God, what’s wrong!’
He was so angry he could barely speak, and gestured shortly. ‘I just found Geoff’s paraphernalia.’
It stopped me cold. ‘Are you sure?’
His voice was sharp. ‘I think I know a heroin kit when I see one…’ he sighed. ‘I’m sorry, cupcake, I’m not angry with you. I just can’t believe it… after all the dumbshit things that kid has done, this beats everything…’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘Maybe it’s my karma. I was such a wanker to my old man. I did the same damned stupid things…’ He looked at me pleadingly, ‘what did we do wrong, Claire?’
I shook my head. ‘No, babe, it’s just him, trying to sort himself out. He came in discontented. You know that.’ I dropped the towel I held and put my arms around him.
‘Why did we ever have kids?’ he said into my hair. ‘Life was easy, before that…No,’ he moved away to look at me, ‘I don’t mean that. Sassa has been a brick, a jewel, and Geoff hasn’t been horrible until recently. But I don’t know what to do, how to reach him, he just rebuffs everything.’ Behind his anger and disappointment, there was real grief, and I felt so sorry.
‘It’s just his age. It’ll get better.’ I smiled at him. ‘You did.’

I won’t say that George was lying in wait for Geoff; he wasn’t standing at the front door like a door guardian. On the contrary, he was out in the workshop, putting all his energy into fiddle making. When Geoff got in, there was something about him that made my heart sink, a kind of energy. Maybe he was high. Maybe it was just because I knew. He seemed disconnected, and brittle as glass. I couldn’t hide my distress. To my own ears, my voice shook as I said to him in the kitchen,
‘Dad wants to talk to you.’
‘Fuck.’ He turned around and went out.

They came in and we all sat down in the common room. The energy was so heavy it was sickening. Both of them looked pretty bad – Geordie grim and Geoff truculent. I felt very bad for all of us. We needed to get Geoff out of his fix, as it were, but we needed to get back to that space of love and trust that we had had until last year.
‘I found your smack,’ George said unceremoniously. I stared at him. The lingo was so creepy and he spoke with such coldness.
‘Yeah, I figured.’ Geoff muttered. He crossed his arms.
‘What’s wrong with you? ‘ George said. ‘Don’t you realise this is death on a spoon?’
Geoff just stared at him. I could feel the tension rising, both of them stubborn and angry. They were so much alike, in more than looks.
‘Geoffy,’ I said.
‘Don’t think it can’t happen to you, boy,’ George said, cracking his knuckles. ‘Because it can.’
‘Yeah yeah, ‘ Geoff said,’ all that scared straight shit.’
‘Mind your language,’ George said quietly, nodding at me. Geoff shrugged. I got the feeling then that he really was wasted.
‘It’s not just illegal,’ George went on,’ but it’s bad for you. For God’s sake, it can kill you, boy, and you haven’t even lived!’
‘What do you know about it?’ Geoff lashed out suddenly. ‘What the hell do you know about living, out here in the woods with your organic everything like the fucking Clampetts! Everything so wholesome and sweet. What do you know about living? What do you know about anything?’

Before God, I thought George would hit him. He turned white, then red, shaking, and stood up, staring at the boy with a murderous expression. He was breathing hard and it was long moments before he spoke.
‘You will mind your language in front of your mother,’ he said at last. He struggled to control himself, clenching his fist and biting his thumb. His eyes were stormy and dark. Thor at Ragnarok. He sat down again.
‘I know, you little asshole, because I was there myself. ‘ He tossed back his hair, that old gesture, though it was long enough not to hang in his eyes anymore. ‘ It’s not something I’m proud of, but I wasn’t always so squeaky clean, as you think. I was a fix away from a wreck in Soho when I was twenty, hanging with people who’d cut your throat for your dope as soon as look at you. I know a thing or two about life. That’s why I chose differently.’
Well, that moved Geoff out of his fog. He glared at me sidelong, in a kind of angry fascinated horror. ‘Is that true?’ He barked.
I nodded slowly.
‘This blows. You people are a bunch of hypocrites,’ he said, getting up. He went to the chair and picked up his rucksack, and without another word, left.

I think we were a little stunned, because neither of us ran after him.
‘Well, that worked,’ Geordie said, after a few moments. He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Christ!’ He sighed and got up, went to the door, but could see nothing.
‘Should we go after him?’
I looked up at him, feeling so sad and sorry. But underneath that, there was a strange kind of calm. From this space, I said,
‘No. He’ll be back. Let be.’ I held out my hand and he came and sat with me on the sofa. His hands were cold. But so were mine. We sat together, he behind me, just breathing, trying to run off the terrible heavy sickening energy.
‘What are we going to do about him, baby?’ He murmured at last. ‘He’ll kill himself. Oh,’ he sighed heavily, on the edge of tears, and I hugged his arms, rocking a little, troubled, but seeking through the darkness for a way. Nothing came to me.
‘I don’t know,’ I said at last. ‘But God will look after him. I have to believe that.’

He told me, in the dark that night, of the awful moment when he saw the syringe.
'For God's sake, you'd think that twenty-five years would wipe the memory from my brain. But I saw it and I just stood there shaking, having flashbacks – the old craving for that old bliss. It scared the hell out of me, and in part that's why I was so angry with Geoff – for bringing that back to me.' He was crying, and I just held him in my arms and kissed him. Of his hell and Geoff's I knew nothing, but their pain was mine, my lover and my baby.

Geoff came back after a week – he hitchhiked to Hemet, where as he said, he crashed with some friends from Wobbly while he sorted himself out. Meanwhile, we had, after talking with Dave, come to a solution. There was no choice or question about heavy drug use in the house, there never had been; and George had taken all Geoff’s stuff out to midden heap and burned it to a crisp.

After dinner the night Geoff came back we sat again in the common room, but the energy was so different. Maybe because he was clean. I don’t know. Anyway, he said to us,
‘I’m sorry Dad, that I was such an asshole. I was really strung out, I –‘ his voice broke. ‘I do have problems with living this way, but that wasn’t the way to share that.’
George sighed. ‘I know, Geoffy. Thank you for that.’
Our boy turned to me,’ Ma, I’m sorry I was disrespectful. It won’t happen again.’
I nodded.
‘Do you want to talk about why this life bothers you?’ George asked.
‘Yeah,’ Geoff nodded, and then paused. ‘Mommy, could I have some tea?’ I got up and made him a cup of chamomile tea.
‘Thanks.’ He slurped the tea and thought for a while. ‘When I was a little kid, I was happy, because I didn’t know any differently, and nobody here made a fuss about how we live. But… I was about ten, and that was when Uncle Jack was here during the Midsummer.’ He paused. ‘I don’t think – I know I never said this, but he and Dave and Barbie were all really cutting about our living like dirty hippies in the woods. That’s what he said. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew it had to be bad, that there was something wrong with us.’ He paused, thinking.
‘I think Jack put them up to it, that they were parroting him.’ He looked up. ‘I don’t know why he did it. Why would a man say that kind of thing to a kid?' Another long pause. We knew why: Matt Carberry, and Jack was fresh out of the divorce, so our happy life was hateful to him. ‘But it ate at me. And I began to notice how happy everybody else seemed, people who had stuff and went to the movies and ate out, and had a normal life. And – and I started to feel like you guys were just mean, that you wanted us to suffer. That you wanted me to suffer, for a stupid ideal that was outdated. ‘ He paused again. ‘I don’t know. I think I still feel that way.’ He would not look at us, but pushed the cup around the footlocker that was our coffee table.

‘Thanks, Geoff, for sharing that with us,’ George said into the silence. ‘I’m sorry that you have felt so bad. I want you to know that we have never done any of this to hurt you, or anyone, nor to make you feel deprived, or weird.’
‘I know that, Dad.’ Geoff said slowly. His eyes teared up. ‘Don’t think I haven’t felt like an ass for feeling this way, but –‘ He broke up. George put his hand on the boy’s arm.
‘But?’ he asked softly.
‘You never gave in on anything!’ Geoff burst out, crying and angry, like a little kid.’ You never allowed any compromise, any input from us – from me – to let me feel less of a freak.’ He cried and sniffed. I got up to get him a tea towel.
George looked up as I sat down again and Geoff blew his nose. ‘ So you think I’m unyielding?’ He asked softly. There was no emotion in the words at all.
‘Yes!’
‘Okay. Okay,’ George said. ‘I hear you. I hear you Geoff,’ his voice did break now. ‘I’m sorry son. I’m sorry that our way of living, my way of being, has hurt you.’
Geoff looked up, and was crying again, ‘thanks Dad!’ And without the least prompting, leaned over and put his arms around Geordie. Then everybody was crying.

When we finally collected ourselves again, George and I looked at each other, and I nodded. Dave’s solution was perfect, well-timed, God stepping in. George said,
‘Geoff, I think I know something that would help you.’
‘Mmm?’
George smiled. ‘Not rehab… No Dave Morrisey volunteers with the Landmark Forum in Palm Springs, and he told us that they have a teen programme coming up in a couple of weeks. We thought you might want to think about going.’
‘What’s that?’
I smiled. ‘Son of est. A kinder gentler est. Nobody screams at you that you’re an asshole.’
‘Yes,' George added, ‘but they still discourage going to the toilet.’
Geoff frowned. ‘Is that the thing you did, with that used-car salesman?’
George nodded cheerfully. ‘It’s still long – four days of 16-hour days. But it helps.’
Geoff was still frowning. ‘Is it expensive?’
‘Don’t worry about that. We’ll work it out, if you want to go,’ George said.
‘…What if I don’t?’
‘Then we’ll help you find something else that you do want.’
Geoff sighed, and thought, and then nodded. ‘Okay. I’ll look into it. I’m so tired of feeling this way.’
George smiled. ‘I know the feeling, kiddo.’

In the dark that night, Geordie asked me, 'Am I really such as hard-ass as Geoff thinks?' I winced. There was such pain in the question, put that way. His whole life had been dedicated to being an open, loving person. He tried very hard, and had more patience than almost anyone else we knew, except maybe Joe.
'Oh, babe,' I kissed his cheek and sat up to light the candles. I put my arms around him and listened to the beating of his heart.
'You've always been a man of strong opinions, my love,' I said at last.
He sighed. 'Always the diplomat, you. That is a kind way of saying yes....'
'No it's not,' I said firmly, and looked up at him. 'You must let me finish: You have strong opinions, but you don't force them on other people...' I smiled. 'You just stand by them steadfastly. That's a good thing!'
'What about Geoff's allegation?'
'Every kid hates their parents for some reason, at that age. It's a stage. You did it. I did it.'
' Sassa didn't.' He said. I had to agree with that. But she was a very mellow child. 'But should we – I! - have allowed them television and video games and stereos, and whatever the latest thing was, Claire?' He looked at me, troubled. 'It seemed like such a slippery slope! I didn't want the energy in the house – the war on telly! All the advertising. It's worse now, violence and ugliness and raunchy sex... Did I do the right thing? And if I didn't, did you not tell me because I am a tyrant?'
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The idea was so absurd, but he was hurting so much. I sought the middle ground, 'My Geordie, you are the furthest thing from a tyrant that ever was. You should not devolve to self-doubts now' I kissed him. 'No! Sweetheart, we had a moral duty to bring them up to be decent people, in whatever way we saw fit, and we did that. If it wasn't this, if we had lived what Geoff called a "normal" life, then it would have been something else to get up his nose. Believe me...'
I smiled a little. 'As for tyranny, do you think me such a ninny as to cower and bow to your opinions?' That raised a smile. 'Have I not always told you what I think?' I nodded. 'Yes I have... Baby,' I said, more softly, 'there is only one place where I bow to your command, where mastery is the rule, and this is it. Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of shadows.'
He drew in a sharp breath, and regarded me with such a mixture of feelings: Love, gratitude, desire. I touched my fingers to his mouth and he kissed them.
'Thou be conscience-calmed,' I whispered. 'See, here it is –'
'Claire-'
And that was an end to fretting.

Geoff got back from his Forum with a whole new attitude, and a lot of laughter. Dave and Carrie came over for dinner and we all talked about his experience.
‘Dad, I almost got thrown out,’ he laughed, looking over at Sassa.
‘Eh? How’s that?’
‘Well you know how on the first night you’re supposed to call someone and tell them you have a story going with them?’
Geordie nodded slowly, squinting.
‘Well, ha!’ he tossed his hair from his eyes. ‘I went up at the break and told the trainer that I wasn’t trying to be obstructive or stubborn but that I couldn’t call you because we didn’t have a phone. And he didn’t believe me! He asked then in a kind of slow way like I was stupid if there was someone who could run over and get you to a phone. So I told him we live two miles out of town through the woods, and three if you take our unimproved road, and we don’t have any neighbours nearer than that.’
‘What did he say?’ George was smiling.
‘He told me I was full of it and not to waste his time.’ He tossed his head again. ‘I had to go hunt up Dave and get him to vouch for me! It was a riot.’
Dave laughed and said, ‘Yeah, Geoff came back from the break with that one and had the whole place in stitches. Bob said it was a new one on him.’
'I did call Sas, because I knew she was at the Burkes',' Geoff said.
‘So you got it?’ Geordie asked, somewhat rhetorically.
Geoff smiled like a baby. ‘Oh yeah! Oh yeah. I got it. In spades. Cleared out a lot of old stuff… Now I can build from here.’

And he did. Through all that summer, he worked really hard around the place, took up the uileann pipes under Dave’s tutelage, and volunteered at the free clinic. Before school started, he came to us and said,’ I think I would like to be a trainer some day. I’d like to help other people get free.’
I have to tell you that we cried.