Lynn got out of the house quick, as I did, a hasty marriage to an inappropriate person, and a quick exit from the relationship. It’s possible I followed her lead on that, which would be the second revelation in as many posts, born of simply writing the words down.
She became my touchstone to adulthood, and to a world outside my tiny suburban frame of reference. She lived in a big house with her boyfriend and another couple. The guys were artists, photographers, with a full darkroom in the basement. They were in a black neighborhood, and had black friends. They let me crash on their couch when I came back to the City, where I would play my guitar late into the night. I learned through the example of that household that I didn’t have to live up to any preconceived standards about anything.
She “loaned” me albums that profoundly shaped my musical life, Richie Havens, Fred Neil, Dave Van Ronk. They became talismans in my musical life, I hope she forgives me for not returning them. She described Van Ronk as the best guitar player in the country and I was immediately intrigued. Years later, I got to drink a bunch of beers with him at a little bar in Austin, and he chuckled at the story.
Then her journey shifted, dramatically, in my point of view. I knew that she had moved into her own place, and the night I came expecting to crash on her couch turned out to be the night she had gotten married. Apparently her letter explaining her decision had arrived after I had left Peabody, where I was living then. It was a blow at the time, I felt abandoned in a sense. Not that I didn’t want her to be happy, but the leap she made was so far from the person I had come to expect her to be. She had been a big supporter of my poetry and my music, where our parents definitely were not. She moved off into a life into which I did not fit. I felt lost without her validation.
One distinct memory that has always stayed with me about Lynn involves thunderstorms. She loved them. I remember her sitting on the back of our ’54 Chevy and waiting for the storms to roll in, then running through the rain as it started to fall.
Thousands of storms have rolled across these plains since those days. Our brothers and our children have grown, have found their way through their own losses and obstacles, and some have sent one more generation out to brave lightning, thunder and howling wind, just to be able to make a big, swooping dance in new spring rain, with only youth to guide them.