My first job with the agency was at Grace Cathedral in Bishop James Pike's office. This particular Episcopal church was renowned for its liberal programs and Bishop Pike himself was quite a revolutionary figure who would make the cover of Time magazine just two years later. By February I had another temporary job with an Irish paper company and was writing my parents that Felix and I were going to live apart. He had taken a hotel room nearby and begun classes at the Art Institute. Then, as the bond between us was most fragile, I became pregnant through circumstances that I will keep to my own memory. Like wind catching in the snow, a child took root between my heart and hands, and I decided I was ready at 26 to become a mother.

In Oregon, my parents were making the hard decision to leave the farm after 20 years there and move into town, putting my grandfather in a retirement home, but they accepted my situation calmly. I moved alone into a tiny two-room apartment in a hotel in North Beach. The attitude at the time toward unmarried mothers was still pretty disapproving, and a few of the doctors I would see suggested adoption. It would be another two years before therapeutic abortion would be legal in California, so that was not even suggested nor did I think of it. In May, Felix moved in with me for the month and during that time he was attentive and loving and talked about marriage, but I had lost trust. At the end of the month when he was done with his first year at the Art Institute, he flew to France to work on some kind of job there and was gone until the last few weeks of my pregnancy.