In the summer of 1974 I looked around me and all I could see was ruin. My father had died in 1968, and knowing what I do about grief I've realized that I hadn't faced his death. He was still alive and to use an over-worked word, yes, I was in denial.

I had married my college boyfriend in 1971, moved to Hartford CT with him, and the marriage fell apart in the autumn of 1973. When I returned to Pittsburgh from Hartford, a sleeping part of me expected to find my father waiting, and I could go back to my junior year of high school and start over again. But this is not what happened. My mother had remarried and my father was indeed gone.

From that autumn of 1973, for about a year, I worked as a "temp" sorting mail in the Blue Cross offices on Smithfield Street and lived with my mother and step-father. I made no plan for myself and I was unable to begin to think about a future. All I could do was sort mail, hang out after work with my fellow temps in downtown Pittsburgh in the bar near the Blue Cross building, and drink "Singapore Slings."

A crisis was building and it exploded when I knew that no, I couldn't go back to high school again, and no, my father wasn't coming back. I needed to find a job and a place to live. Through the Jewish grapevine a job was found for me at Mercy Hospital, in the old building made of bricks that stood on the boundary line between the Hill District and downtown Pittsburgh. I hated this job but I had the luck of finding the most beautiful, perfect, jewel of an apartment on Ward Street in South Oakland. I had no car--this didn't matter--everybody knows how good the public transportation system in Pittsburgh is. On the corner, across from me, was a natural foods co-op and a laundromat.

I was numb; could not feel anything except that I found this little place on Ward Street to cling to like a little shoot of ivy. This is where my Aunt Maxine stepped up to the plate. My aunt is one of my mother's sisters, and had had her share of physical problems and heartache. She had found her way, though; she heard about Transcendental Meditation on a television talk show and at that time was practicing it with awesome results.

I took my instructions in TM and spent a lot of time with my aunt, talking about the past, the present, and what my future could possibly be. My aunt never told me what to do, just--and God bless her--listened to me and my stories impassively. Who knows if it was the TM, the jewel-like apartment, being close to my aunt or all of these things added up together but I began to feel better.

I began to cultivate solitude rather than hate it. Lots of authors wrote positive things about solitude, including of course DH Lawrence. I got hold of a huge slab of posterboard, copied out all my favorite DHL quotations on it, and mounted it in my kitchen. On weekends I strolled through Oakland, looking at the people and the stores and the buildings at a kindly, calm distance. I wasn't frantic and bleeding anymore, and I wasn't numb. My aunt and I went on weekend retreats to a monastery in Greensburg, PA where we ate vegetarian food, participated in discussion groups, and watched tapes of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi giving speeches. There was no social director there, thank God! If you wanted to be alone, you were left alone. This was a new kind of respect not granted in the outside world.

Finally--and my aim is to be honest without fear--I began to wear mens' jeans. Like so many millions of young women I hated my body and I was always at war with this body of mine. With the peace of solitude came a desire to leave the battlefield of weight and body image, and mens' clothing gave me freedom. You'll find this idea in one of Sherlock Holmes' best stories, about "the woman..." A Scandal in Bohemia.

By the beginning of 1976 I felt whole and ready to make a change. I moved to Philadelphia and met my husband Peter in the spring of that year.

For many years I used to hide in shame when I thought about this period of time. But something magical happens when you write your memoirs; I tell this to my writing students. In the act of recording the past you change it. So now I am not ashamed of posting DH Lawrence quotations all over my kitchen on Ward Street, walking leisurely around Oakland viewing my world at a distance, wearing men's jeans bought in Kaufmann's Department Store's mens clothing department, sitting for 20 minutes twice daily and evoking my mantra. Why would these memories bring shame? Because it all seemed anti-social at the time. I didn't go out on dates, if somebody offered to "fix me up" I always said no, I would not wear womens' clothing, and the only person I associated with on a regular basis was my aunt and the people at work. This time alone provided the building blocks needed for adulthood.