Beware the change of decade

 

Thursday, July 16, 2009

 

Obama’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Michael Jackson’s possible murder and other such depressing items dominate the news. But more depressing is the fact that we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, man’s first steps on the moon, and my brief tour of duty with the United States Army.

But most of the major changes in my life have occurred just prior to the turn of a decade, so I’m cringing in expectation of another shortly.

I usually do something or have something done to me that takes ten years to recover from, such as joining the Army during the height of the Vietnam War the way other men might flee to the French Foreign Legion after falling into love.

This sort of repeated what occurred back in 1959 when my crazy mother fled her father’s house and dragged me into the heart of Paterson’s housing projects where I learned first hand what it means to feel outcast in a community that didn’t like the color of my skin.

Perhaps I am repeating a pattern of my mother’s life, which also saw her doing foolish things prior to the turn of each decade – such as falling in love with my no good father.

Maybe we simply read into the past what we want and it is merely a coincidence that such changes occurred at such times, when they really happen all the time, but we – needing to read the tea leaves as to what will happen next – place greater importance on such moments so we can prepare for the next major event.

Yet in retrospect, it seems like everything that happened to me during the 1970s – my running away and return, my settling down to a job, and my eventual escape from the working class ritual, all started with my working in the print factory where I met my first wife.

As the decade wore on, I began to seek change, and just when I could not stand what I was and what I was doing, I took the next step. So that by 1979, I went back to school. And the next decade seem to be a reaction to that initial action, until by the end of the 1980s I had worn myself out on those hopes and dreams, and was ready for another change. I can say the same for the 1990s.

Again, I feel worn out the way I do at each decade’s end, wondering what direction the next ten years will take – although in truth I regret very little in my life or the direction life has taken me. Sure, I might have become something other than I am, someone more successful, someone who other people might admire or despise, but for the most part I am where I would want to be, doing what I need to do, creating things for my own pleasure without regard to whether or not these things will lead to success.

But I do miss many of the people whose lives I have passed through, faces I can even sometimes envision – those who I once called friends or even enemies, who helped define me and that period of my life.

I cover the city council meetings and see an attorney who in another role represents my one time boyhood best friend from Paterson – a boy/man I have not seen since my going off into the army, but have followed through reports from others such as the kids coming passed my Fotomat booth in Clifton after having taken class with my friend, and other reports such as the newspaper article saying he had retired from teaching. Most recently, I read a report of his being on the school board there.

Other people have popped up out of nowhere from those years, many of whom are looking to find out how we all got on – something akin to what John Lennon said just before his death when he commented about all of us making it through the 1970s in one piece.

So what’s next?

If there is a change, will I have to spend the next decade working through its implications?