Coop’s Childhood Part 5 – Burns Park & Divorce
March 26th, 2014 at 16:06
While the events of the U.S. civil rights movement and theVietnam War were roiling the larger society, the first big event that I was privy to in our little family’s cataclysm was in early April of 1964 around my ninth birthday, bearing helpless witness to my mom having what later I would learn was a panic attack. I recall that I was in my room and heard her out in the living room pacing the floor and crying haltingly punctuated by gasps for air. When I came into the living room to see what was going on she looked at me with absolute terror in her eyes, “Cooper… I can’t breathe!”, as if somehow she was hoping I could do something about it.Just this event itself was a cataclysm for me personally. Adults seemed like a different species than I and my peers, even like deities, and no more so than my mom. Besides having always been healthy and energetic, she seemed always a magnitude larger than life and always on top of every situation and able to articulate strong words and take the needed action in any crisis. But