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Autumns
In the season of Autumn, my thoughts go back to one of the most traumatic experiences (yet, ultimately proven to be quite salutary) of my life, my matriculation to college, and the first term of my freshman year, lasting from September 9th to November 23rd, 1976.
This had been planned by my parents since the time they adopted me when I was five months old. To them, an unforeseen bonus was the enforcement of separation from my First Beloved and from the c.b. community of Channel 22. They had hoped for a third separation, which I will not disclose here because I think it deserves a poem, but that, thankfully, did not happen.
As I write this, I am listening to Queen's third album, Night At The Opera, which I also did very often during that first time at college. I repeatedly listened to wo of the songs, You're My Best Friend and 39 (which I am listening to now); and the last three songs on the backside. The Best Friend song reminded me, of course, of my First Beloved. The 39 song reminded me of incidents from the life of Frederic Chopin and George Sand, beginning with their voyage to Majorca in 1839; and Chopin's remarks to Sand's daiughter, Solange---which were made over a year after the collapse of the relationship with her mother---that she should sign her letters to him with the last name Sand, rather than her legal surname, Dudevant; and that, in her eyes, he imagined he could see her mother's eyes.
The last three songs of the second side, which I did not listen to nearly as often, reminded me of incidents from the life of the great English Poet, John Milton, and his massive epic poem, Paradise Lost.
I listened to the albums first side repeatedly; and, even though I used headphones in the dormitory, my roommate (who had declared to me, on our third day of residency, that we were not friends, would not become friends, and would take no more meals together) seemed to be annoyed by the music, as well as by my presence.
But then, that third separation---which my parents had secretly hoped would occur--never happened. Believe it or not, although I have thought about this time period, and the incidents it contained, for decades (forty-six years really), I did not, until this summer, understand the gift given me by my First Beloved that sustained and protected me through all of the shock and, actually sometimes, distresses of the separation, and of residing in an environment that was like nothing I had ever experienced before, and I hope to never experience again. Only now recently was the solution disclosed to me; not by my effort, but, I truly believe, my the Mercy of God's Grace; and all the elements of that time, the incidents, the wild emotional swings, fell into place.
Starward
