May 20. 1966

I was fifteen, caught between the tail end of childhood and looming adolescence (becoming boy crazy). Sharing adventures with Vania and other girlfriends would soon give way to pining by the phone waiting for some cruel or clueless guy to call.

I was still deeply attached to my childhood nuclear family, as likely to spend my Friday nights with them as with my friends. It was family swim night at the local Y and for a time the five of us went every week. I can still smell the humid locker rooms and the chlorinated pool; it seemed primal and thrilling to swim after dark.

The last two sentences describe a state of mind – or heart – that I called “worldliness’” for lack of a better word. Between the ages of 12 and 16, I physically ached from an overload of emotions I had no way to process. Too much beauty in a sunset or the loneliness of the solitary liquid amber tree outside my window brought me to tears. I miss those tumultuous emotions. That fragile moment on the cusp of adolescence is too brief!