No Second Acts

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Polio taught me two major lessons in life. One of them would appear years later in a John Lennon lyric: "Life is something that happens to you while you're busy making other plans." The other is credited to Friederich Nietzsche: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

The travails of living with polio gave me added strength to have a child out of wedlock at a time when it was stigmatized, especially among upper-middle class Jewish families. I'd heard about the smug remarks, the tsk-tsking of self-righteous relatives and so-called friends. They hurt and angered me. Still, it didn't stop me. Nor did it stop me when those same do-gooders called me a bad mom for leaving my young son to finish school.

I'll never forget what one doctor told my parents shortly after I got polio. "Frannie will probably never fully regain the use of her right leg. She'll always be a cripple." It was a brutal prognosis said with brutal honesty. It hurt me to write Barry that letter, words on paper filled with hard truths—brutal honesty, if you will. But not to inform him that I was becoming romantically involved with another guy would have made matters worse, would have prolonged the inevitable. So I told him, leaving out intimate details.

That guy was Jacob Lewis whom I met at a dorm mixer in early '66. He went to Amherst, a few minutes' drive from Mount Holyoke. I had last seen Barry over winter break when he was home on leave. I felt I still loved him, but our plans to one day marry seemed more distant than ever. We argued a lot, mostly about the war. Our positions had hardened. He was more gung-ho than ever, while I had begun to show up at anti-war rallies, hobbling along, carrying a sign. Jacob saw it my way, called LBJ's foreign policy a crime against humanity. It didn't hurt that he was cute and into reading Victorian novels by Trollope, Dickens and Bronte. And, unlike Barry, he didn't forget his condoms. Fortunately, my new dorm mate was willing to get lost when Jacob and I wanted to have fun—all within Mount Holyoke's stilted curfew.

Barry's tour of duty ended in June of '67, just in time for the so-called Summer of Love. The Beatles had just released "Sergeant Pepper;" peaceniks crowed about a new world order, and hippies flocked to San Francisco with flowers in their hair. Meanwhile, American troop strength in Vietnam approached a half million. But Barry was no longer the warrior hawk. In fact, he had become bitter. "This war isn't winnable," he said. "We're throwing men into a bottomless pit."

Our son Mitch was now two. He still lived with my family, and I vowed never again to leave him. In the fall, I started my first year at a local law school. Barry got a job counseling drug addicts and applied to graduate school for a master's degree in psychology. Financially, we could have made it. But, as Fitzgerald famously said, "there are no second acts in American lives." Something had died between us. It wasn't Jacob—we broke up after a few months—and it wasn't anyone I or Barry had met since. We both had changed, Barry because of his experiences in Vietnam; and me, because of the feeling that I had outgrown him. We shared custody of Mitch, married other people and had additional children.

I'm not one to look back, to get all nostalgic and dewy-eyed about the past. Other than a few wrinkles, I've had a rich, fulfilling life. Still, on sultry summer nights, when the air crackles with the sound of crickets and the sweet smell of freshly cut grass surrounds me, I am once again that young woman, smitten and eager, making love with Barry Silberman under that big oak tree by the lake.