The Free Spirit

Revolution's Eclipse, 1971 (Part Two)

"Knowing we are growing here forever should be enough to bring us all together..."

Don didn't stay mad at me forever, of course, but it did take a few days before he came around. It was a quarter past eleven in the evening, and I was making myself some chamomile tea before bed. My husband was standing in the kitchen drinking a cup of Horlick's to settle his mind before going to bed, and he glanced up at me as I entered the room. We didn't say anything to each other, but he watched me as I put the kettle on and poured the boiling water into a mug. Just as I started to mix in a little honey, he put down his mug, crossed the room, pulled me into his arms and pressed his lips against mine, kissing me ever so passionately before breaking it and resting his forehead against mine. We didn't say anything to each other even then, only knowing that our problem had been resolved and that I was forgiven. We sat on the sofa, his arm around my shoulders, and silently finished our beverages, and then we turned into bed, making love until the early hours of the night.

It wasn't too much longer after when we were celebrating Marley's first birthday, and it was the day before Don was due to go on tour with Phil, so he was happy to spend Marley's first birthday with her at home. Of course, Marley wouldn't remember this day, but the photographs were nice. The other children don't have pictures with Don on their first birthdays. But like every other day, Marley's birthday came and went, and Don was on tour again for quite some time. In fact, it was to Australia he went this time, and for most of May and June, the brothers toured Australia on a tour called 'Hippies With Money', a name that Phil evidently didn't like, but it was more what the papers dubbed it. While Don was on tour, Ginger reached out to me telling me that another antiwar protest would be taking place in San Francisco in about a week and she asked me to participate.

"Ginger, I already said that I can't. I promised Don that I wouldn't participate in protests anymore after May Day," I told her, but Ginger persisted.

"Come on, Catherine! He's on tour right now, in Australia! He can't stop you," Ginger replied.

"And what am I going to do with my four children? I can't exactly ask his mother to come and watch them, she'll tell them in a heartbeat, and Phil doesn't have a wife or a girlfriend to watch them. I've got Phil's daughter, too, you know. Jason's with his mum but Pippa is with me," I replied.

"We'll figure something out. We can hire a babysitter to watch them!"

"Ah, I don't know... I'd like to participate, really, but I have to worry about the kids."

"Well, Elton's old enough to watch them, isn't he?"

"He's twelve years old, Ginger, he's not nearly old enough to watch all of them!"

"Well, then bring them to San Francisco, you can have a room with them and Elton can watch them when we're at the protest and then when we get back, you'll still have them with you."

"I dunno, Ginger, I don't know if I should go behind Don's back with this..."

"Then don't, tell him I asked you to perform at a concert with me because that's what we'll be doing! Don't give a speech, just sing, and then you won't technically be 'protesting', you'll be entertaining protestors. They can't arrest us for singing." She was right, technically, they couldn't, so in mid-June, the kids and I caught a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco and got a hotel room, where I met Ginger and we discussed the songs that we would sing. First, we recorded a song together called 'Parallellograms', which we recorded in a very Everly Brothers style. I sang lead and Ginger in her higher soprano voice sang harmony, and it was released as a single on the A side of another song she had recorded, a Welsh folk song called 'Aderyn Pur'. Ginger decided to cover Joan Baez's 'Saigon Bride' and I would sing some of my older songs while also covering a couple of other protest songs and singing new ones that I had written over the last couple of years. We would also sing a couple of songs together, including 'Parallelograms'.