June 1

June 1 is an important date to me. On June 1, 1992 my best friend, who had flown from San Francisco to Delaware where I was living, and I loaded all my worldly possessions into a U-Haul and drove it from Newark, Delaware to San Francisco, California where I would live for the next 4 years and 1 day, literally. On June 1, 1996 I watched a moving van pull away from my East Bay apartment again loaded with all my worldly possessions and this time I drove alone cross-country again this time headed for a friend's house in Maryland about 50 miles from Baltimore where I would live for the next 7 years. I actually left on June 2 for that return trip because the final apartment clean-up took a little longer than expected, accounting for the extra day.

The 1992 trip was very Thelma and Louise (that movie was only a year old at that time) although in our version no one died or took a header into the Grand Canyon. It was a good time spent with a good - a very good - friend and some parts of it still live on in my memory as fresh as they were 18 years ago. The ensuing 4 years were 4 of the most important in my life, especially as my development as a psychic are concerned.

The 1996 trip was good too even though I did that one alone. I bought a cell phone, then called a mobile phone, at Sears in California. It was the size of child's shoe box and cost $325 and all it did was make and receive phone calls. It had a charger twice its size and I would take it into the hotel room every night and charge it so I would have it the next day, just in case. I returned it to a Sears in Maryland, slightly used but none the worse for the wear, and got all my money back, except for the few usage charges. Ahh...now that was a long time ago.

One of my favorite memories from that trip is a rainy afternoon spent in a diner in Iowa. I'd parked my car in front of a large plate glass window where my California license plate was visible. It was mid-afternoon, between the lunch and dinner crowds. The waitresses had been talking farm talk. Iowa is farm country and the only good parts of my horribly dysfunctional childhood had been spent on my grandparents' farm so I knew farm talk. June is planting season and the talk center on fathers and husbands planting various crops. It felt like home. One of the waitresses noticed my license plate and asked where I was going. I told her Maryland and she let out a longing sigh. "Charlie won't even let me drive to Des Moines alone," she told me. She was too old to still be under the watchful eye of a father so I assumed Charlie was her husband. Des Moines was less than 50 miles from the diner. To her it could have been New York City. She envied me my freedom and I envied her her Charlie who wouldn't let her go to the big city alone. Life is a trade off. We make our choices and live with our consequences.

In June of 2004 my friend from California was in a horrific accident in Montana. She and her husband were hospitalized in Montana and didn't return home to California until the following October, and even then it was by helicopter. She spent the next several years enduring several surgeries to save her leg which, I am happy to report, was eventually saved. Today she is on her way to Milwaukee to see her dying father.

I am recovering slowly from a broken shoulder and wouldn't have the nerve to drive cross country alone again. Although I'm really, really glad I did it the one time with my best friend and the other time alone.

Life is a trade off and a process. We make our choices and we live with our consequences, our failures, our triumphs and our memories...