Tag Archives: coming of age

Coop Goes to Europe Part 5 – Oktober War

It was Thursday October 4th 1973 when I debarked the train from Bern Switzerland in Munich Germany, fifty pound (or should I say 22 kilo) pack on my back, bleary from lack of sleep, but happy to recognize Angelica and Helmut on the train platform smiling and scanning the numerous people exiting the train. I on the other hand looked much different than the five foot six inch short haired fifteen-year-old kid they had met three years ago. Now I had a long curly mop of hair, surrounding my head in what they called a “natural” on a white person or an “afro” on a black person. I was six feet and even taller wearing my two-inch-heeled shoes (which I typically wore instead of my big clunky hiking boots which still hurt my feet and hung from my pack). When Angelica figured out by process of elimination who I was she started waving vigorously and her face lit up. Helmut followed her lead and waved as well, though more sedately, and put on his best charming smile.

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Coop Goes to Europe Part 4 – Rail Pass

Andermatt, Switzerland
It was Wednesday October 3 1973 when I left behind the Swiss town of Chur, my erstwhile travel partner Jack, and my more recent comrades, David, Bublil, Peter and particularly Ashild, who in her calm but passionate eyes had stirred my heart. I slept in that last morning at the youth hostel, my body and consciousness processing the traumatic and compelling events of the previous evening, nestled in my warm down sleeping bag in the cold dormitory room with the other mostly young adult travelers. By the time I awoke, put on my clothes, again decided not to take a cold shower (though I used a wet slightly soapy washcloth on some key body parts), and entered the main room, Ashild, Bublil and their male entourage had already departed. I ate my stash of Granola and yogurt, the latter having stayed nicely cool in the unheated dormitory room, and pondered the state of my heart and my soul.

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Coop Goes to Europe Part 3 – Chur

Chur, Switzerland
So Friday morning my new travel companion Jack and I left Munich, Oktoberfest, and our army brat hosts, and based on our agreed upon plan, took off hitchhiking south for Switzerland. Our plan was to travel together for a week in Switzerland and then return to Munich, hopefully to finally hook up with Angelica and Helmut. Rides came slowly, maybe half an hour to an hour wait before someone pulled over, a lot more waiting with your thumb out than I was used to hitching back and forth from college that past year. But the weather was pleasant and Jack and I enjoyed talking about our time in Munich and travel plans going forward.

We did not make it into Switzerland that day due to an unexpected detour by our last ride, a forty-something guy hauling a big sailboat behind his VW bus who seemed somewhat crazy or at least very very scatterbrained. With darkness approaching he took us into the town of Friedrichshafen in the very southernmost part of Bavaria, where he said he was going to participate the next morning in a big boat race. The town was on the north shore of a forty mile long lake called the Bodensee, which made up part of the border between West Germany and Switzerland. It was a beautiful town with great views of the lake. The blue-gray water blended into the blue-gray somewhat hazy sky at dusk to make the interface between the two indistinguishable, and with the far shore hidden in the haze, it felt like the town was on the edge of an endless abyss.

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Coop Goes to Europe Part 2 – On My Own

With all the bravado I could muster I left the hotel and my travel companion Angie, the two of us having decided to part company, I to continue some version of our original planned trip to the continent, and her to stay in London and hook up with her parents who had planned a trip to England. Though I was not excited about continuing, and part of me wanted to bail on the whole odyssey and return home, I could not bear the sense of defeat I knew I would feel if I gave up the adventure, even now alone and on my own. Like it or not, for my own still tenuous self respect, I had to continue. I knew at some level I was throwing myself into a hugely developmental “deep end” that I was in no way looking forward to but determined to traverse somehow and return home a triumphant European traveler.

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Unschooling in the Art of Self-Direction

From my own experience and what I’ve read of the wisdom of others, directing ones own life is not a science that can be taught through instruction but an art that is best developed from self-initiated efforts. Unfortunately, conventional school up to now has not been a good venue for young people to learn to direct their own development, rather serving mainly as a venue for the larger community (or maybe more specifically the state) to attempt to program young people’s developmental path. Looking back at my own youth that was certainly the case. Most of the developmental experiences that helped me learn to direct my own life happened outside of the classroom and outside of the context of school.

Directing ones own life is one of the most critical skills you learn in the process of “unschooling”, which Wikipedia defines as…

A range of educational philosophies and practices centered on allowing children to learn through their natural life experiences, including play, game play, household responsibilities, work experience, and social interaction, rather than through a more traditional school curriculum. There are some who find it controversial. Unschooling encourages exploration of activities, often initiated by the children themselves, facilitated by the adults. Unschooling differs from conventional schooling principally in the thesis that standard curricula and conventional grading methods, as well as other features of traditional schooling, are counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each child.

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Sweathogs, Heathers & Mean Girls

Conventional patriarchal wisdom does not necessarily think about young women who are coming of age developing a “thick skin” to help them navigate the slings and arrows of life. Women are supposed instead to be soft, receptive and relational rather than “tough bitches”. But our daughter Emma learned to toughen up to survive a gauntlet of challenging female classmates, and that thicker skin facilitated her overcoming her shyness. Her experience recalled for me the cliques of girls in the movies “Mean Girls” and “Heathers”, and the very tough class of students known as the “Sweathogs” in the “Welcome Back Kotter” situation comedy of the late 1970s. When I discussed it with Emma recently, she said it was definitely the low point in a life that she has generally found blessed and wonderful.

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The Nest Leaves Me

My Mom & Dad Circa 1977
In June of 1977 (when I was 22), my mom and dad, who had been divorced for twelve years, decided to re-marry each other. My mom would be moving from our rented house in Ann Arbor down to Dayton Ohio to live with our dad there. My younger brother Peter, who was going to school in Chicago, would move down to Dayton with them for the summer, and then return to Chicago in the fall. I was a year away from completing school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, so had no wish to leave my home town, at least at this point. For the first time in my life, I was looking at being completely on my own, including having to find myself a new place to live. Continue reading →

A Very Long Day

My European Backpacking Trip ID
My (mostly) solo ten-week backpacking trip through Europe in the fall of 1973 (at age 18) was an adventure, not always happy, not always fun, but a compelling developmental journey. One memorable day began before sunrise in Trier Germany and ended finally at 4am the next morning in Brussels Belgium, with four cities and six trains in between. Continue reading →

Coming of Age at the Laundromat

In 1971, when I was sixteen years old and still living with my mom and younger brother Peter in Ann Arbor, our old washing machine in the basement broke down and my mom (who could barely pay the regular bills) decided she could not afford to fix or replace it, at least not right away. Who would think this would be the catalyst for me to have a transforming experience.

Tears in her eyes, she pulled the wet clothes out of the broken-down and leaking washer and threw them in a plastic laundry basket. Her life was already heavy on her shoulders, a divorced single parent with two teenage kids, suffering from depression, and just barely paying bills on the child-support payment from my dad. Having to take laundry to the Laundromat (until she could somehow magically move the money pots around in her budget to get a new washer) felt like the last straw. Continue reading →

Dandelion Wine

Reading Ray Bradbury’s book paved the way for my own encounter with, and embrace of, the magical side of life, while still not believing in god. I think I read the book over forty years ago in junior high English class, and I can hardly recall any of the details of the story, but no book I’ve read has had more impact on my life. It’s one of those cases where you encounter an idea that does not seem to impact you immediately, but seeds a thought in your mind that maybe comes to fruition at some later time, when that idea addresses a new need.

I think as a child I lived in a world of constant magic, creativity and imagination, so acknowledging a magical side of life was not an issue… there was just life and it was what it was… and for me that included being magical. Now looking back, I acknowledge the context of circumstances, the privilege of being a white male growing up in a progressive, middle-class community in America. I also acknowledge the proactive effort of my parents to raise me “outside the box” and dedicate time and money (given their modest means) to create an enriched environment for me to bloom within and explore life’s enchantment. Continue reading →