My mother, and her sister's birthdays are both in August. As such, they both wished to sit at the birthday table at the Salvation Army today; which is done once a month to honor all birthdays from the month.
The theme for today's meal was "The 60s".
For me, that decade included graduating from high school, joining the Marine Corps, stint in Vietnam, marriage, and death of baby from car accident.
It was a time of unrestrained hedonistic activity. Alcohol was a high priority on that list, as a result I only remember a few things from that decade.
JFK's assassination, lunar landing, LBJ stopping bombing north of the DMZ, drugs over reality, hari krishna devotees, Beattles, and the folk music genre, Hong Kong flu, and George Jones.
The 70s was the time of enlightenment for me, personally. I came to realize that I had been trying to live a legacy I had internalized from my dad: That to be a real man, you had to drink more, faster, and longer than anyone else, and have more sexual relationships.
I came to realize just how empty a person can become, inside, when trying to live out a philosophy like that. I came to understand what being alone in a crowd really meant. It was in this decade that I became acquainted with Virginia Satir and one of my most favoritest sayings that I have posted on the header.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I have not attained to perfection...I have progressed pretty well up Maslow's hierarchical needs scale: but still I ain't perfect.
My momma will be 85 this year; dad died in 1973 at the ripe old age of 54; my high school 45 year reunion is in two weeks; and retirement is pretty much all it has been cracked up to be.
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