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A couple of the guys fixed up this old VW bus, and we all painted it. Birds, butterflies, rainbows. Totally psychedelic!

I was going to stay on the farm. It was nice there and nobody hassled us. But something told me to get on that bus and ride, so I did.

Even when it broke down somewhere in Bumfuck, well, I still had my thumb. I don’t know why I needed to keep going, but I did. It was like some part of me knew I had to get somewhere.

Somewhere turned out to be San Francisco.

It was happening. ItwasA Happening!

I made a lot of friends there, people who understood, reallygotwhat it was like to be held down by the man. Who said fuck no to war. This was our moment, and we were going to change the world. Live in peace and harmony, live off the land, and share the freaking bounty.

And that’s how I met Charlie. That’s when Iknewwhy I’d had to keep going until I did.

It wasn’t just that he was handsome, though oh yeah, those green eyes just did me in. He was so smart, and like me, so open. He loved music like I did. And like me, he wanted a world where you could just be, just live, just take care of each other.

Sometimes we’d talk all night about how we’d build that world. For each other, for our friends, for everyone.

Then I got knocked up. But I was really happy, and when I told Charlie, he was really happy, too. We were going to have a baby! And we were going to bring that baby into the world with love, raise that baby in love like neither of us ever had.

It was the idea of a baby that had Charlie telling me things he hadn’t before, even when we talked all night. Like he said, he’d put all of that out of his life because his family was mostly everything he stood against.

Hey, mine, too!

It turned out his family was rich, like really rolling. I didn’t care about that. Like Charlie was an artist, and he worked his street art, sold enough for us to get by. And I waited tables at this vegetarian place.

We got by fine, and didn’t need all that material bullshit that screws people up.

But he told me about this house, this great big house, and some land, way over in Maine. But right on the Atlantic, man. And how the house was his now.

We could build our life there, and have a place for art, for music, for peace. We could have chickens and raise vegetables. Maybe we’d get a nanny goat!

Our baby could be born there and grow up by the sea.

They called it The Manor. Lost Bride Manor because way back this woman got stabbed to death on her wedding day. Harsh, man! And it was haunted, which is wild!

So we got this camper, and Charlie and me and some friends started across the country. He told me about his mother—a complete bitch who tried to run his life like she did everyone’s. How she tried to push him away from his art. Tried to make him be a lawyer.

My Charlie, a lawyer! Just makes me laugh.

He wanted us to get married, like legal, license, the works. Because of the baby (I told him babies, because I could just feel two in there) and because he didn’t want his old lady bitch mother to try anything with me or our kids.

You know what surprised me? The minute he said it, I wanted it, too. I didn’t care about the legal shit, but I wanted us to make those promises to each other, to our babies.

We headed to Maryland because you can get a license there pretty quick and without much hassle. I bought a dress, this beautiful white dress at a secondhand shop with a high waist and a skirt that would work because I was showing.

While we camped, we met this guy who had a brother, and the brother had a place in the mountains. Not mountains like out west. These were all green and soft.

We got married there, in a kind of meadow. Even though it was almost October, it was as warm as summer. So I picked wildflowers and made a ring of them to wear, and more to hold.

This old guy in overalls married us—he was a traveling preacher—and he was cool with us saying our own words. Like me telling Charlie I’d live with him in love and how we’d fill our lives with the riches of nature, and him telling me how I’d made him a better human and brought all the color into his life.

He even had a ring for me, and it was perfect. Two hearts hooked together like our hearts were. I knew when he put it on my finger, it was the only material thing I’d ever really need.

That symbol of our hearts joined forever made me cry a little, but a happy cry.

Then we were married! Life mates. Husband, wife? No! Those are establishment labels.

We had music, and we danced and danced and danced in the meadow in the sunlight, and in the moonlight. A perfect day, and I put it on my list of the happiest.