The Free Spirit

The Dusk of Counterculture, 1970 (Part One)

"Her clothes are kinda funny, her hair is kinda wild and free..."

The early seventies were still rocky and revolutionary, but the seventies were a time of sitting back and watching the changes that we spent the sixties fighting for finally be implemented. "I can't believe it's already 1970!" I said to my husband for probably the fifteenth time since the new year, and Don let out a sigh.

"Baby, it's been 1970 for two weeks now, when's that gonna dawn on ya?" he asked me as he sat at the dining room table reading the newspaper. We were in the kitchen and I wore a knee-length floral dress with long sleeves cinched at the wrist, although it fell somewhat oddly over my expanding abdomen. My hair fell over my shoulders in the long dark brown curls I'd always had, with my ice blue eyes hiding behind my circle-rimmed glasses. Don sat at the table wearing a comfortable white tunic and brown suede bell-bottomed trousers with a design embroidered up the outer side of each leg, his dark brown curly hair falling over his eyes in a period shag. The kids were at school, except for Maggie, who was napping upstairs, or so we thought, and our record was playing Edison Lighthouse's recent hit, 'Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes'.

"Possibly never," I told him. "It'll have been twenty years since the fifties, now. It just feels so... weird to me..."

"Honey, I think you're bored. You need to go back to protestin', I think," Don replied with a chuckle.

"I gave all that up to be with my children, and I'm sticking to it," I told him. "What are you reading about, anyway?"

"Right now, I'm lookin' at an ad for somethin' they call 'the Fat Fighters', Don replied, and I rolled my eyes at him.

"What are you actually reading about?"

"Nothin', actually. Just listenin' to ya moan and groan about how it's already 1970." I gave him a shove as he chuckled. "How's the littleun holdin' up?"

"Oh, the usual. No kicking yet, but it's pressing on my bladder quite a bit, this one! None of the others did it this much."

"He's sayin', 'Mama, I'm gonna make ya pee every five minutes'!" He laughed at his own joke.

"It won't be as funny when it's you getting wee'd on in the middle of the night, now, will it?" I asked him.

"Consider it payback for the overdose," he replied.

"You called it a 'he', What makes you so sure it's a boy?"

"Nothin', it could be a boy, it could be a girl. I'll love it either way," Don replied, setting down his paper to put a hand on my expanding abdomen. "Ain't that right, little one? Mama and Daddy already love ya so, so much!"

"This one is wreaking havoc on Mummy," I replied as my husband smiled up at me. "How're things with Phil and Jackie? Have you heard anything yet?"

'Custody battle is still ragin' and their divorce ain't been finalised yet, but should be in the next couple of months. He wants both to hurry up so he can take Jason, marry Michelle and restart his life."

"Marry Michelle already? A quick marriage to Jackie got him into this mess in the first place."

"It's what he wants, and I'm sick of arguin' with him over it so I'm just sittin' back and lettin' him wreck his own life," Don replied, pulling me onto his lap and wrapping his arms around me.

"Are you two going to release an album this year?" I asked him as I brushed his hair out of his face.

"I don't know, Warner'll probably release somethin'... I, on the other hand, might release somethin' on my own."