This was written about 1995.

I graduated from high school in 1959.

I don’t remember much about my high school graduation. We wore robes with hats and tassels. The high school orchestra played “Pomp and Circumstance.” They were slightly off-key but it was music I liked, and it gave me goose-bumps. Both my parents attended my graduation, an event in itself, because they were not much given to public occasions. I was glad they had come. I was glad they were proud of me.

School was my life, it had been for a long time, and I sensed that it would continue to be for a long time. I kept hoping, even then, that my parents might understand this. My father, at least, was somewhat open, in the vein of “whatever you want to do is pretty much OK with me.” My mother was more rigid and fearful: “you’ll get so educated you’ll never find yourself a husband; it’s more sensible to go to work and earn a living; you’ll end up an old maid school teacher if you keep this up.” She didn’t exactly say those words, of course, though she had come close many times. She was good at silent disapproval.

I knew, fortunately, that I couldn’t please her and also please myself. I was lucky to have had teachers and counselors who said I would be crazy not to go to college. Even so, it was an ambivalent choice, and one I tried to attenuate by both working part-time and going to college as well, and eventually moving away from home. Those were rocky months following my graduation. I did get a pretty good full-time job during the summer, with the false promise that I would continue in September but I quit and started college.

Since I was still seventeen, my mother didn’t want me living away from home, and I wanted the freedom of a college girl. There were bizarre arguments about clothing, the posters in my room, and, of course, money. I had paid for my tuition and books. I had my part-time job. I had some spending money. Basically, I just slept at home. Yet I felt I was being held hostage and counted the days until I turned eighteen.

When I actually did move out, the strain eased. Years later my mother brought up the subject and offered a sort of explanation. She said she felt everyone was against her just then, especially me. And, years later, my sister told me that she thought that at that time our mother was abusing the tranquilizers she had been taking for back pain.