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Show Moon -160 one listened and begged him to say more. The first time you hear the opiate bit, it's impressive. "People ought to face reality without leaning on false beliefs," he said. "We can't settle for anything less than the absolute truth." I wondered how one arrived at such a truth, how one could seek it without enormous cost. Caleb told me he'd recently moved into a communal house in Washington, D.C. which had a rule that no one could engage in a possessive relationship. Black Panthers, peace marchers, anyone could crash for the asking, and no one was allowed to impose his standards on anyone else. For all its pot smoking and aura of childlike freedom, the late Sixties was puritanically demanding of its young, as rule-bound as the culture they rebelled against. This, Mother, was the sort of thing you must have noticed, but you probably didn't point it out, knowing how your sons needed to believe in what they were doing. Lee tossed a lock of hair over his shoulder and nodded sagely, took a hit of pot, passed it to Caleb. I was absurdly happy to be sitting on the floor with them shoulder to shoulder. It was as if by virtue of having become men with convictions, they were now wiser and better than I-even if I couldn't go along with everything they said. This wasn't a liberated way to think, I knew, but their openness with me was a gift so splendid I was willing to defer to their newly-born masculine assurance, to honor them. Lee said, "Mom really surprised me today. She was great." "It's too late," Caleb said. "She should have confronted him a long time ago. She wouldn't be so oppressed if she'd looked at the truth." "Well, she's done it now," I said. "How do you think she'll handle it?" But Caleb didn't seem to hear me. He spoke to Lee as if he were the only one in the room. "Maybe Mom should have insisted that Dad not drink so much. |