And now a message from Christina . . .

Dear Friends and Family of Heart,

As I sit here with the sun going down, I am again amazed at both the profundity and the absurdity of life.

Growing up in the House of RAW I was in the peculiar and rather odd position of being exposed to such a wide spectrum of both information and … experience. As I look back I can see perhaps a bit more clearly now why my parents were the way they were. Early on, I adored them (mostly). Then I became aware they were not very much like my friend’s parents; I had to sit with that a while! For instance, In MY house, in 1969, Bob and Arlen were dead serious when they spoke to me and a couple of my young teen friends saying, “it is best if you are doing any experimentation with hallucinogens like LSD, Mescaline, Peyote, etc., that you be in a safe environment. Come here if you have nowhere else to go.”

Yes, we were TOTALLY experimenting (which was totally obvious to my parents) – drugs were available on almost every street corner; at the beach, in the movie theaters. We passed around sheets of Blotter after tearing off a portion, chewing paper happily on the city beaches of Lake Michigan.

I felt that I (of course) was wiser than most, ahead of the game – because I ONLY took LSD every 72 hours so my body “had time to process it”. Yup, total insanity.

During that last year in Chicago I saw kids flip out, have psychotic breakdowns, have transcendent life experiences and complete cognitive paradigm shifts. I saw knife fights in the alleys, dads pointing rifles at kids, Black Panthers coming over to dinner, and prayers for the Viet Nam War to end on the lawns. I felt old; way, way old, before my time. I had a boyfriend who said “you are an old soul, I look at you and see the eyes of a thirty year-old.” I dropped him like a hot potato because I yearned for him to acknowledge the Timeless within me… I was thirteen.

My shaggy haired, bell-bottomed friends were blown away at “how cool” my parents were, and often DID come to our basement apartment when they were troubled, bored, or afraid to go home because they were too stoned to deal with it. Around this time all of us kids at this time decided to call our parents Bob and Arlen instead of mom and dad, as we were “growing up.” I began to feel my parents were actually pretty oblivious to the vast world I saw but did not understand. This scared me; intensified my fears and insecurities as I experienced the normative process of human individuation. Adrift, I floated, looking for some way to anchor in the midst of Chaos (Hey there, Eris, I am talkin’ at you!), I desperately needed some sort of bridging from my core to the outer world (more on that in the next issue!).

Such are the teen years! Indubitably, a Chapel Perilous for each and every one of us. 

In my childhood, I struggled a lot, and suffered greatly with depression that caused my soul to ache. In my teens, through LSD, I discovered there MIGHT be a way to live that would work for me – thus I sought the goal of becoming enlightened by the age of eighteen (didn’t happen). In my twenties, I discovered that my parents were actually real people; thinking, feeling, people – that actually began to make sense (kind of)! In my thirties, I had a passionate personal cause which both Bob and Arlen were so supportive of, for which I am eternally grateful; they SAW me – and loved me. In my forties, I got married (never thought I would) and then lost my mom to the passages of time, and in my fifties, I had the honor, joy and grief (and stress) of caring for Bob as he was dying. My last moments with him there was nothing, nothing but the sweetest whisper of Love reverberating down the timelines, rippling through all time and space, our pulsating universe itself carrying his whispered last words to me; “I am so very happy.”

Today, I am closing in on my 60th birthday, and I am tired, yet exhilarated to be open, and welcoming to whatever Life delivers my way.

Huzzah! (that is actually a Bobism, I heard him say it many times!

All my love, Christina

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