Seismic Events

As we plod along into the 21st century, what constitutes a family has become as variable as the weather. There are all kinds besides the standard nuclear family: single parent, extended, reconstituted (also known as blended), co-parent, LGBT, childless, and probably some others I haven’t thought of. But even back in the 1960s, not every family was like the Andersons or the Cleavers of television lore. I was a part of three such families when I was growing up – blended, single parent, and what I like to call “makeshift.” Add to that a fourth – extended. Think of it as a variety of fruits and vegetables tossed into a vintage avocado green Waring blender. What comes out is often completely different and surprising.

Navigating childhood and adolescence through shifting family dynamics wasn’t easy. Doing it with the added challenge of a particular medical condition made it more difficult. And doing it during the rapidly changing and evolving cultural landscape of the 1960s and 1970s made it unique and unforgettable. It was an incredible time, coming of age in the San Francisco Bay Area. I grew up in San Mateo on the Peninsula, with San Francisco to the north and what would come to be known as Silicon Valley to the south. The Bay Area was ground zero for the countercultural revolution of the 60s and the technological revolution of the 70s. The Grateful Dead played at small clubs on the Peninsula, including The In Room in Belmont, where I live today with my family. Ken Kesey was throwing acid parties in a house off Highway 84 in La Honda, and his Merry Band of Pranksters once parked their bus “Furthur” outside my aunt and uncle’s house in Burlingame and dropped in on their neighbors. And a couple of guys started building computers in a suburban garage down in Los Altos and launched a computer revolution.

It was a dynamic and continually changing era. I watched the world around me morph in just a few years from the world of my parents and grandparents into the world we recognize today. During the same stretch, I saw my family situation change and reshape itself multiple times. Add to that, all the obstacles I had to overcome dealing with a neurological disorder on top of the everyday challenges of adolescence, and I can sum it up with the adage, never a dull moment.

My mom and I were poor. We sold our house, moved into an apartment, and we were always one missed paycheck away from bad times. But I never felt poor because, during that time, a whole network of support sprung up all around us in the little courtyard of an apartment complex in San Mateo, and in the unlikely figure of an airline mechanic who would become a fixture in our lives. Together, this random collection of individuals would experience the dawn of a new age in one of the most exciting places on the planet and come together to form a community.

I read that you should never write a memoir as a catharsis, and this is not that kind of memoir. Sure, there is some drama and pain and tragedy, as everyone experiences at some point in their lives. But there is much more humor and hopefulness and positivity. This story is meant to be a celebration of the people who were part of my formative years, and to bring that time back to life in a way that old photos in an album cannot. It is also a celebration of the era in which we lived, and a document of local Bay Area and Peninsula history that I experienced. Lastly, it is a record of my experiences with a disorder called Tourette Syndrome, and how I dealt with and overcame the many challenges and obstacles it threw at me.

As Harper Lee wrote in To Kill a Mockingbird, you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. In my case, I had a family who chose me.