Faithful readers of Retrospect may recall my story on the prompt Beaches, which included memories of two spring break trips I took three decades apart: a 1961 trip with my parents and sisters to Fort Lauderdale shortly after the movie Where the Boys Are came out; and a 1992 trip to Maui with my future second husband and two kids where we had a Seder in a Suitcase. In between those trips was my archetypal “college students descend on Florida beaches” trip in 1971.

It all started because Nancy’s boyfriend of almost three years dumped her. Nancy and Steve had started dating at the beginning of freshman year, and by the middle of junior year she was thinking this was for keeps. Unfortunately, he didn’t agree. She was devastated. So her roommate Debbie decided that the thing to do was whisk her away somewhere for spring break to take her mind off of him. Debbie invited me and two other friends to go with them, to help cheer up Nancy. This was going to be a low-budget trip, with all five of us in one motel room. There was a guy somebody knew (maybe a Harvard grad student?) who was driving to Florida and back in a station wagon, and was happy to have five more people to split the gas and the driving.

We knew we didn’t want to go to Fort Lauderdale or Miami Beach, because they were too full of rowdy college students. We all wanted to be someplace quiet and peaceful where we could get a suntan and forget about the traumas of academia while we helped Nancy forget about Steve. One of the girls knew of a place called Ormond Beach that she had gone to as a child because her grandmother had had a place there. It sounded nice, and had the advantage of being 250 miles north of Fort Lauderdale, so a shorter drive by several hours. The grandmother wasn’t there any more, which is why we needed to book a hotel room. Somebody made the arrangements (hard to remember how we did those things before the internet), getting us a room with two double beds and a rollaway.

We drove straight through from Cambridge to Ormond Beach, which took almost 24 hours. We only stopped for food and gas. People took turns driving and sleeping. I didn’t have my driver’s license yet, and didn’t know how to drive, so I was spared driving duty, but everyone else took long shifts. When I wasn’t sleeping, my job was to ride shotgun and talk to the drivers to keep them from falling asleep.

Much to our dismay, when we got to Ormond Beach, we discovered that it wasn’t the peaceful refuge we were looking for. The next beach south of Ormond was Daytona, home of the Daytona International Speedway where the famous Daytona 500 NASCAR race has been held every year since 1959. The racing aficionados had spilled over from Daytona to Ormond, and there were cars driving up and down the beach! Tough to read a novel and work on your suntan when there are muscle cars going vroom vroom right past you every few minutes.

The motel we were staying at turned out to be filled with college students. Most of them seemed to be guys who were drinking vast quantities of beer. They would proudly invite us to come see the beer can pyramids they had made. We were not impressed.

The movie Love Story had just come out a couple of months earlier, and when they heard we were from Radcliffe, they invariably asked “Do you know Ali MacGraw?” Every. Single. Time. We started out giving serious answers: no we didn’t know her, she had in fact gone to Wellesley, not Radcliffe, and besides she was over 30, an actress playing the part of a college student. They didn’t listen. So eventually we gave up and just answered yes, we knew her. It was easier, and really, who cared?

In spite of the cars on the beach and the drunken guys wanting Ali MacGraw, we did have a good time. We read some books, swam in the ocean, sunbathed on the beach, and enjoyed each other’s company. At the end of the week, station-wagon guy came back and picked us up. I don’t know where he spent his vacation. The drive back to Cambridge seemed even longer than the drive going down. One of the girls had managed to lose her wallet and therefore her driver’s license, and she didn’t want to drive without a license in case we got pulled over (we wouldn’t have). But the other four drivers got us back safely. And we sure had great tans to show off!

Postscript: For a slightly racier spring break story, from my law school years, check out Blame It On Mexico.

I read Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s obituary with great sadness and keen interest. She passed away in 2006, aged 52 from breast cancer. She was a leading mezzo-soprano of her day and, though I’d never heard her perform, our lives intersected at a few points. She had also attended the Interlochen Arts Camp in her youth, so we shared a love of the pine-forested place of wonder in Northern Michigan. But, like my close friend and also mezzo, Emily, who started camp as a french horn player, Lorraine was a violist, actually had a good professional career until she came to the Boston Conservatory and trained as an opera singer at age 26. She stayed here for many years as her career and reputation grew.

She made her professional debut in a production directed by Peter Sellars, who at the time was still in Boston. That was another connection. His nephew was my David’s best friend in kindergarten. Peter’s sister lived in his South End apartment, which we used to visit all the time. Finally I asked about the theatrical posters that lined the entrance wall and Juliet confided about her brother. Of course I knew who Peter Sellars was. At this point, his career had taken him to San Francisco, but he hadn’t sold his South End condo; Juliet and Ollie lived there and commuted to the private school where David attended kindergarten. They were inseparable that year and the kids frequented both our  homes.

David & Ollie, 1991

Lorraine became known for her ability to sing Baroque music as well as contemporary music and was likened to the great Maria Callas for her ability to dig deeply into her roles and bring out the passion in her performances. She met conductor/composer Peter Hunt, who divorced his wife for her. They formed a unique partnership of marriage and art. He wrote several song cycles for her; “Rilke Songs” and “Neruda Songs”. She recorded them and received great acclaim and posthumous Grammys for them. I knew they were based on passionate love poems and, after reading her obituary, looked up the poems of Neruda.

Pablo Neruda was a Chilean diplomat who won the Nobel Peace prize, but also, under this pen name, wrote gorgeous, sensual poetry. I was blown away when I looked up some of his poetry. I will share one:

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

(translated by Mark Eisner)

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

Whew…gets me hot just reading it. So secretive, so deep. I just love every image of perfect intimacy and blending of two lovers, particularly the last two lines; the hands becoming one, the sharing of dreams. Read it again, slowly. It reveals more, like that hidden aroma that dimly lives within the lover’s body.

For my granddaughter with significant disabilities, spring break will literally break her, along with the rest of us.
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I like male writers, too. Dostoyevsky’s 'Crime and Punishment' and Melville’s 'Moby-Dick' are huge favorites, and John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' is a thing of remarkable beauty. But overall, it’s the psychological depth of women authors -- their fascination with our inner lives -- that I find illuminating and essential.
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