Turn the Sandglass

What if you could get another chance with the one who got away?
Mark forsakes a scholarship to Yale and decides instead to leave his working-class home in Ohio to attend Cal Berkeley in 1967. Once there he immerses himself in the many forms of consciousness-expanding opportunities presented to him, and meets Pat, a politically active graduate student for whom he is an unanticipated diversion, protector in her serious involvements, anchor to her secure and stable past, and beacon to a similar future, while for him she is the unanticipated emotional involvement he had determined to avoid while pursuing his academic goals. Though Mark does not share her idealistic commitment to the anti-war movement, and she does not accept his practical determination to graduate and become conventionally successful, they fall in love, but separate when the conflict between her idealism and his practicality becomes intolerable to her. Pat seemingly disappears while Mark is impelled along his predictable and pedestrian trajectory of middle-class existence. When the time is right, many years later, through some divine intervention, they meet again and are given that rare chance to recover the love they lost so many years ago.