At my 30th birthday party, I shared some memories with a dear friend about Ithaca, NY, the beautiful town where I was born and spent the first 10 years of my life. I hadn’t been back in more than 15 years.

As the little girl of longhaired hippie parents who were committed to changing the world, I was a quintessential flower child. I had long blond hair and wore second hand overalls that sometimes had patches on them. There was very much a sense of free spirit not only for me as a young child but also in the young idealistic adults around me. Attending activist rallies and protests, even as a baby, instilled in me an understanding that it is our responsibility to question authority and stand up against injustice.

In addition to political chants and slogans, another soundtrack in my early childhood was my mother’s singing. As she pushed me on the swing at Stewart Park, looking out to Lake Cayuga she sang, “Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.” She also made up silly little songs that made me laugh and sing along.

When my father finished his studies at Cornell, my parents bought a Carvel ice cream store in Ithaca. We rarely had other sweets in the house but we always had ice cream. I often accompanied my parents to the store and loved the family friends and college students who worked there.

Because our household was decidedly spiritual but certainly not religious, I was not baptized as a baby. I often asked my mother about God and was fascinated that God was everywhere. And especially as a young child, I experienced the presence of God and delighted in sitting in the grass by myself aware of divine love surrounding and filling me. 

My parents were active in transcendental meditation (TM) and practiced twice a day for 20 minutes at a time. We attended potluck dinners and TM retreats. At one retreat I met a silly man who called me the Oshkosh Girl because I always wore overalls. He somehow convinced me that he was Santa Clause even though he was a skinny young guy with no facial hair. Many years later I learned he was actually the comedian, Andy Kauffman. 

Just outside of Ithaca, living on land near a pond, we had family friends with names like Forever, Love-Light, and Freedom through the “Yea God” Family commune where we often visited. Their motto was, “Start the day with love, spend the day with love, end the day with love.” Hanging out with the Yea God children was an adventure because we explored and played on our own with very few limits or adult supervision. The people in the Yea God family smelled of wood smoke.

Another childhood smell from that era I couldn’t identify until years later when I was at a folk concert. I made the connection as a preteen when a sense of nostalgia struck me in the form of a marijuana contact high.

While I experienced a number of bumps and bruises in later life, I am grateful for these early carefree years of wonder and exploration. They set a standard of contemplation balanced with activism in a “gorges” environment.

After sharing some of these memories my friend asked, “So when are we going?” A few weeks later, in July 2001, we took what was to become an annual five-hour road trip to Ithaca, NY. As we drove into town, the familiarity engulfed me. The downtown commons came into view, the yeasty smells of local bakeries and pizzerias filled the air. Vistas of Lake Cayuga and walks through the gorges that I once I had taken for granted now filled me with a sense of awe. I felt like I could breathe more fully in Ithaca than I could in my urban NJ home.