I hope this is not too long, but a lot happened in 1971 and 1972 in my life

FROM What's been the most consequential year of your life?

If I have to confine it to a calendar year I'll pick 1972 or Jewish Year 5733, roughly embracing early September 9, 1972 to September 27, 1973. I'll cheat and include one important development over Labor Day 1971 and extend out to early October 1973, with the cluster being Jewish Year 5733, roughly embracing early September 9, 1972 to September 27, 1973.

I'm going to basically use a post I made on the now-defunct www.cbc.ca/forums. Since this forum doesn't have a strike-through I can't show deletions, mostly of text responsive to the Canadian nature of that forum Additions from the original post are in dark blue:

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I am writing this on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of my father’s death (January 5, 1973) and my going to Temple today to mark that anniversary.

The period of my life bracketed by my father’s death was a period of my life marked by great promise, great tragedy, and great change. Unfortunately and sadly, I have not always lived up to that promise, though at 45 (now 60) I suppose there’s still time.

Over Labor Day weekend 1971 my father had a colostomy. This effectively ended the really privileged part of my life as the only child of a prosperous interior architect. We were told after the surgery that "they got it all" but my reading the school and local library (I was a 14 year old high school freshman) belied the happy horse manure.

I turned 15 in April 1972. While I always did well academically, I had never done well socially and that year, my freshman year of high school, was about the worst. My parents were asked to consider putting me in another school after a kid named Charlie chased me down two flights of stairs and through much of the school, whirling a bicycle chain. I wound up being able to hold a set of doors against him. When authorities finally arrived, Charlie told them that I had just bitten a dog outside the school's front door. My parents were "recommended" to find a private school for me. My mother favored this approach, my father not as much. Needless to say, Charlie was not disciplined. See 12 yr old Boy beaten in school by classmate` Chicago suburb. That summer, I was thrown out of the first camp I went to after half the summer.

The second half started the more positive phase, though marked by a developing tragedy. First, the bad part. My father’s colon cancer had started to recur, though we didn’t quite know it, at least officially. Now the good part.

I went to a different camp for the second half of the summer. It featured limited travel as part of the program. For the first time in my life, I made friends relatively easily. One of those was a girl. We repeatedly ran into each other and were singing the same song, coincidentally, each time. I think the songs were Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. The other was Led Zeppellin’s Stairway to Heaven.

After returning home, my school was still pretty serious about getting me out, but they had no grounds to expel me. My family and the school settled on my starting some activities that began before school started to see what happened. I chose marching band (I played tuba, which was odd since I was 5’5”), the school newspaper and soccer. Both went well. One notable "leftover" from the previous year was that literally during the first week of school, now 10th grade, Charlie yanked a high stool out from under me in the school's weather center. It was lucky I wasn't badly hurt. Given my near-expulsion from school the previous June, I wasn't about to take this one up with the school.My father came home early from work that day, feeling the early stages of the cancer recurrence that would kill him almost four months later to the day. My father got on the phone with Charlie's father. I didn't get to hear the conversation but I heard not a word from Charlie from that September day in 1972 until his unlamented (by me) death 40 years later.

That semester, I was active in those activities as well as the weather club (which is why you see me on the Kyoto threads constantly). Though in soccer I was a fullback, they put me in once as forward, because the New Rochelle team was getting a bit aggressive. I scored a goal during my 3 minutes in.

During that period, I made lots of friends, many of which I still am close with 30 (45) years later. It was one of the happiest, most productive periods of my life. It was, unfortunately, also marked by my father’s rapid decline and death from cancer. We played tennis for the last time in October 1972, distributed campaign literature for McGovern on November 5, 1972 and he died at the beginning of January 1973. The silver lining, if you can call it that, was that the death brought me back into the Jewish fold, and I became close with my soon to be stepfather of 40 years, until his death. That spring I became close with one of the friends I had made that fall, and remain close. See When you stop communicating with a close friend without notice (the post was in response to a thread, and a small part of the post was about gaps in communication for periods of time between the Nixon era and now).

Summer 1973 was an entirely different kind of experience. While my relationships weren't perfect on my summer teen tour they were quite good. Basically I was for really the first time not the recipient of demeaning "special handling." And I met the person who became the "best man" at my May 1991 wedding. Things were not "happily ever after" and there were bumps along the way. But that limited period of time was a sea change.

When I say I have not always lived up to the promise of that period, I mean that I am not all that I can be. I am, on balance, not satisfied with the friends I’ve made since that period (with the exception, of course, of my wife). I have allowed myself to be sidetracked by petty insecurities and concerns, things that, in the long run, didn’t and don’t matter.

If there was a time I’d like to go back to, it’s that period. I’d like to start over from the end of that period and do many things differently and better.


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FROM When Should a Parent Tell Their Offspring That Other Parent is Fatally Ill?

On Friday, December 15, 1972 I was a 15 year old high school sophomore. I came home from school that icy day, hoping that the Holiday concert I was due to perform in wasn't going to be snowed or iced out.

My father had had a rectal cancer resected in late August 1971. After a promising start he began developing pains in July 1972. He had a liver scan and his doctor flat-out lied to him about the results; they told him it was "clear." While he had his good days, many days were increasingly painful by October. My doctor said he told my mother the outlook and at some level I think he was telling me the truth. When he gave my mother a surprise party on November 7, 1972, her 40th birthday, I think she was pretty sure it was near the end, though he still went to work in NYC every day.

He had another liver scan on November 24, the day after Thanksgiving. His doctor told my mother that he was close to death, though that day he felt well enough we even talked about his returning to the ski slopes that winter. His last day of work was December 8; he was checked into New Rochelle Hospital on December 11, a Monday. One of the doctors there told my mother "don't you think it's time you told your son"?

When I came home she tried to be indirect. It didn't work, since I knew from my reading at the library what the real outlook for his disease was. I insisted on calling his doctor, since teh lack of candor seriously bothered me. He told me he had told her in October, but that he knew from before the 1971 operation my father was finished. I called my cousin in another state, who confirmed that I had read the literature correctly. That night, since my mother didn't feel up to driving, I took a cab to the High School to play at the concert. It was too icy to bike the six or so miles.

I wanted to tell my father what his fate was to be. My mother would not permit me to do that. my father died on January 5, 1973, exactly three weeks later.


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FROM An American's Love of Canada

During the summer of 1972, I went to a camp that featured limited travel as part of the program. I was 15 at the time and met my first, sort-of girlfriend. We repeatedly ran into each other and were singing the same song, coincidentally, each time. One of the songs was Joni Mitchell's (of Canada) Both Sides Now. Here's the Canadian part. The final trip of the summer was to Quintes Isle, Ontario. That was my first of many trips to Canada.

The next school semester, fall 1972, I was active in band, soccer, the school newspaper and the weather club (which is why you see me on the climate change threads constantly). The band was what would figure in Canada.

I took part in an immensely enjoyable High School band exchange program with York High School, Toronto, in April 1973. Spring was slow in coming that year, and was chilled to the bone as the wind swept down Bloor and Yonge Street. I browsed some of the book shops on Yonge Street and read about the beginnings of the "Canadian Content" rules. I found it fascinating. To my surprise, I remembered Bloor and Yonge Street well when my wife and I visited in June 1997 (we relocated our trip to Algonquin Park; combination of a heat wave and her advanced stage of pregnancy). I thoroughly enjoyed that trip, as well as my wife's and my trip in 1992 to Banff and Calgary, and my independent trips to Quebec in 1979 and 1986 (I did not like my Montreal trip in 1976). Oh, I forgot to mention my first trip,with summer camp, during August 1972, to Quintes Island, and the Alexandria Bay area.

(SNIP)

In short, Canada has always been part of my life.