the beauty of a love that lasts
It’s been 55 years or so since I was marching against the War in Vietnam next to Daniel Ellsberg, fighting for civil, women’s and disability rights, protesting and burning my bra, throwing tomatoes at the racist George Wallace and loudly caring about the health of our planet. Now, more than half a century later, here in 2026, it can sometimes feel like all of it didn’t matter and my heart is so heavy with the shit storm we are experiencing from the present administration.
Which makes me wonder: how do I manage to endure?
The one thing that weaves its way through the past 55 years is the man who I wake up with each morning.
Rick and I met in 1970. He was making surf movies and I was working at Harvard for Dr. James Watson’s microbiology department and studying business. We could not have been more different.
He was truly a hippie–the long hair, bangles and beads, I-Ching, Tarot, the Tao, macrobiotic diet and lots of psychedelics. I was serious about my career, devoted to the straight and narrow, and did not have any interest in altering my mind. That said, he embraced my way of being, and I his. In time, we merged into each other—a total melding of mind, body and soul.
We bought a piece of land in Vermont and built our stone house with an FHA loan and settled in to raise our son. We decided to never get married because we did not need a piece of paper to solidify our love and we did not want the government to have any control over us.
We grew our own vegetables and our own pot. Our second child was born at home and after 16 years we decided to tie the knot because our children were being called bastards.
At some point all my rebelliousness had turned into maternal nurturing and the need to take care of my family. But this did not in any way reduce my passion for supporting humanitarian issues; instead, my focus became quiet service on dozens of nonprofit boards that did the good works that were important to me.
As the most employable of the two of us, I began my career helping to redevelop the Burlington, Vermont, waterfront for the next 40 years and Rick focused on making award-winning documentary films. His first film was “Legends of American Skiing,” which he made in his twenties, and his most recent film is about Ethan Allen for the 250th anniversary of our country’s independence.
Living on top of a hillside in Vermont way far out in the hinterlands creates a very close-knit life. After those 55 years of togetherness, we reflect on the wonderful memories that are behind us and think less about our future. We live mostly in the here and now (tip of the hat to Baba Ram Dass). Our children and grandchildren live close but they have their own busy lives.
We turn to each other each morning and are thankful for the years we have been given to create more memories together. I believe we are closer now than ever before because we know time is not on our side and at any moment one of us could pass on. We joke about who will go first, but it is apparent that whoever is left behind will bear the burden of inconsolable grief.
As our generation moves on, we spend more time at funerals than at weddings. We are deeply troubled that our generation was not able to create the world we hoped for back in the 1960s and we feel despair that much of the gains we made are now being erased and replaced with greed, corruption and brutal ignorance.
But every morning when we gratefully wake up, we do our morning yoga and head downstairs for some oatmeal to keep us regular. We then fire up the embers of our commitment to make a better world for our children’s children, and we sit down and get busy to do just that.
