The Cure

When I am met with trying times, I usually respond with calm determination.  I take the situation as it is and figure out a pragmatic approach that will lead me through.  But, sometimes, all the stress, disappointment and uncertainty collect on my shoulders and I struggle to find the will to go on.  Some people find their strength in faith, prayer or meditation.  Others can’t find their way and resort to destructive methods that serve to break them down even more.  For me, today, actually every time, it’s found on my bike down a country road. 

I learned this coping mechanism from my dad.  He showed me how biking can change you forever. He bought me my bike which turned out to be the only way for me to save myself.  Better than giving me a fish, he taught me how to fish.

It’s hard to say how it works.  It could be the time spent alone, outside, quiet with only the sound of my tires on the payment or the birds that like to follow me.  Or the way the road grit covers my sweat-covered legs, arms and face.  Or the way I pedal until my legs burn, then put my head down and pedal ten miles more.  It all comes together into the perfect answer to the darkness that occasionally tries to smother me.   

My strength and clear mind return from wherever they had been hiding and I marvel at how the real me be so easily found by just riding.   I’ve lived this life long enough to know the despair will come back eventually.  And I will sit with its grip on my life for a day or two.  Then, I remember I have the cure sitting in the garage patiently waiting for me to help myself.

Older Stuff

Hi, folks!  Just wanted to share a couple pieces I wrote a few years ago.  Enjoy!

Sins of the Father

Growing up as a tomboy, I was lucky to have a father who taught me the things all good tomboys should know, like how to throw a tight spiral and how to do a left-handed lay-up. Those were important skills that ensured I was picked first in street football and now impress my children. Yet, my father failed me. He never taught me how to spit.

You athletes know how important spitting is. Imagine being an asthmatic recovering from bronchitis on a bike ride whose father never taught to spit. It's embarrassing. Actually, my immediate reaction to my pathetic attempt was, "Dammit, Dad!". I'm not one to generally blame things on my father. Sure, I've complained about how he gave me his short, muscular legs and insanely freckled skin, but those things aren't really his fault. He IS to blame for this. Sins of omission can be the most painful.

Rural Illinois Mother Meets Death by Monarch

A week ago, I commented on Facebook about how happy I was to see the first monarchs of the season while on my bike ride. They are so striking and graceful. My grandma used to collect butterflies and frame them. When I see monarchs I think of her. I should say, I used to think of her. When I see a monarch now, I think of death.
Today, at mile 13 of my ride in the blistering Illinois heat, one of those beautiful monarchs hit me right between the eyes. The bastard got its wing stuck up under my sunglasses and kept flapping like a freaking bat until I got it free. I am proud to say I kept the bike up but the monarch went down missing a wing. You know, if it had hit me a couple inches lower I might have very well aspirated a butterfly. Helluva way to die.

"Rural Illinois Mother Meets Death by Monarch". They would probably find me dead on the side of Ford County Road 600 East with no signs of a struggle. The only clue would be the ring of pollen around my lips. I wonder if they would give my family my bike or keep it as evidence. My dad bought me that bike so they should really give it to him.
The kids would take it hard. Marcus would start having nightmares about giant cocoons and Zach would insist on wearing a beekeepers outfit just to go outside. Toya would start a support group for kids whose parents were killed by insects. Mikayla's football team would all wear butterfly patches on their jerseys. My kids would all get tattoos of butterflies on their shoulders. Of course, if I had been hit and killed by a car they probably wouldn't get tattoos of Volvos, but still.
The Gibson City Courier would run a two-part series called: "Butterflies: The Silent Killers". Ryan and the kids would be on Oprah and talk about what a great mom I was. Ryan would start crying when he told Oprah that his last words to me were, "Why do I have to go get the spaghetti sauce? Can't you just get it when you get back from your ride?". He would talk about how hard it is to be a widower with six kids, so Oprah would give them a lifetime supply of food from Schwann's and six full-ride college scholarships.

When it's hot and you are out in the middle of corn fields, you have a lot of time to think. By the time I got to this part in my story, I was home. I knew everyone would be so grateful to see me. I mean, look how close I had come to a tragic death that would change their lives forever. I was right, they were very happy to see me. Mikayla said, "Mom, when you go get the spaghetti sauce will you get the Pepperidge Farm garlic bread? That cheap stuff sucks."

Alabama on my own--Days One Through Three

DAY 1:  So, the trip began by sitting in the Champaign Train Station waiting on The City of New Orleans train, which was one hour late. Luckily (not) those of us waiting were able to listen to a man who had been to every country in the world, done every job in the world, taught every subject in the world. He was so worldly that he condemned anyone different from what his church thought was acceptable. Fun.

The train was great. I slept from Champaign to Memphis. I woke up at 6 am to the lovely sounds of the Tennessee drawl. Once the train was filled to the brim with Memphis folks, the trip REALLY began.

For those of you who aren't in southern Louisiana or Alabama, this is Mardi Gras season. Which means for the past few weeks up until this Tuesday, there are parades, beads and some serious partying going down. On The City of New Orleans, they start serving booze at 6 am.

Across the aisle from me were Jimi and Buddy. They weren't traveling together, but they both got on at Memphis. We formed a fast friendship and they proved to be fabulous fun. Jimi is a divorcee in her mid-fifties who goes down to her sister's every Mardi Gras. She just started dating an older English guy. However, not even new love comes between Jimi and Mardi Gras, so he was left in Memphis to sulk.

Buddy was also in his mid-fifties with dyed black longish hair. His goatee was also dyed black. He wore Elvis Costello glasses. Buddy's real name is josh, I think, and he used to be in the music business. He goes down to Mardi Gras every year to visit with friends and often goes to Crewe parties. (Note: If you don't know what Mardi Gras Crewes are, google it). However, he was surprised to learn he had been invited to one of the balls this year, which is quite an honor. He had to bring a tux.

Jimi, Buddy and I ate lunch together in the dining car and had a great time. We had the military guys sitting across from us take a picture of us three with Jimi's iPhone. It took 15 minutes for the three of us "old farts" to figure out how to type in our emails for Jimi to send the pic to us. It still hasn't shown up in my inbox.

The rest of trip was spent with the "Upper Deck Caboose" folks, as we called ourselves partying and having a great time. One guy, who brought his own flask, started calling me Lincoln because my birthday was on Lincoln's birthday. The "Saints-T-shirt guy's" wife took a picture of me and this other friend who's birthday was yesterday.

"Hey, Lincoln, get over here! We are taking pictures of the birthday girls!" I would love to post the pic she took with my phone, however, she cut off our heads. "Saints-T-Shirt guy's" wife had been drinking since Memphis.

At the recommendation of the guy who served me my coffee in the lounge car, I had Larry and Mom meet me in Hammond, LA instead of New Orleans. It was a much easier pick-up for them. However, the Upper Deck folks didn't like that very much. "Lincoln, where are you going?" "Hey, get back here! Wait, you aren't supposed to get off until New Orleans!"

After arriving in Gulf Shores, we went to Lulu's for dinner. Lulu's is a Gulf Shores classic which is owned by Jimmy Buffet's sister, Lucy. Great food, great atmosphere, great booze. We had L.A. (Lower Alabama) caviar and fried green tomatoes for starters and, at Mom's recommendation, I had the Mahi Mahi tacos. Absolutely scrumptious! I ate way too much and had to spend the rest of the evening laying around in my pajamas.

DAYS 2-3:

Tonya: "Hi, my name is Tonya and I'm a shell-a-holic."
All the other addicts: "Hi, Tonya."

During our trip to Gulf Shores last year, I enjoyed walking on the beach collecting shells. I tried to spend every free moment I could on the beach with my neck craned down, shuffling along. However, it wasn't until Thursday that the depths of my problem became clear to myself, my mom and Larry and these two old dudes on the beach.

Thursday morning was foggy, rainy, windy and 37 degrees. The entire southern half of Alabama and Louisiana closed schools and county offices for the next day because there was a chance of snow. As my mom would go out on the balcony to smoke, she would bundle herself up like we were in the Arctic and would still be cursing when she came back in. I, however, was getting ready to go look for shells.

The shelling was good but the most exciting part was that I got to see a stingray that had washed up dead on the beach. After seeing the stingray, I found myself mumbling, "See, that's what you get. People who don't come out on the beach in the rain and cold don't get to see dead stingrays. Stupid, stupid people." Of course, as I was saying that, I was shuffling around the beach, in the rain, with jeans that were sopping wet and, therefore, sliding down my butt. To top off the look, I was wearing my mom's turquoise jacket with the hood up and cinched tight. Good, good look for anyone.

That was yesterday. I knew today was going to be a perfect day for shelling because it was going to be sunny and warmer. During my first cup of coffee, I was looking out over the beach and noticed a figure, hunched over right around an area where I found some good shells the day before.

"Larry, look at that! That bastard is trying to get my shells!"

Within 5 minutes I was out there getting back at it. I was moving past these two old dudes who were fishing on the shore. When you are walking slowly on the beach with a plastic bag in your hand, every person you see says something profound to you like, "Did you find any shells?", or "Any good ones?". These guys started in and I quickly turned the conversation back to their fishing. They were complaining about nothing biting and I said, "Yesterday morning I saw a stingray washed up here." I was just trying to give the pathetic old men a little hope. You know their wives left them there to fish while they went shopping. I just thought I'd help keep their spirits up.

They promptly responded with, "You were on the beach yesterday morning??? Why?? The weather was shit."

I started to fire back something about how I was looking for shells and got some really great ones and got to see a dead stingray, but then I looked down at myself with my sandy yoga pants, ugly lime green sweatshirt and dorky red "Billy's Seafood" visor and couldn't say anything.

Uncle Gino

When your childhood is spent relocating, you are filled with memories, both brief and epic, of those who breezed through your life.  Memories can be instantly brought back from a voice, a name, but for me it's often a smell.  That's why the smell of a certain perfume, homemade meat sauce and Maraschino cherries makes me think of my early years in St. Louis.

This perfume I'm talking about might be famous, but I have no idea.  I refer to it by the only name I ever called it, Carol's perfume.  Carol was a tall, thin, blonde woman who lived in the townhouse next door.  She had a distinct laugh possessed solely by her and her sister, Dee.  It was a cackle, but not at all witch-y.  Carol had a dog named Whiskers that, now that I think about it, resembled Carol herself:  tall, thin with wiry yellow hair and long nails.  I only mention the nails because our stairs shared a common wall and every time Whiskers would walk upstairs we could hear the clicking of his nails on the wooden steps.  Going up the stairs was not a problem, but the going down was completely uncivilized.  I never witnessed him descending so my description of what would happen is based solely on what I could hear through the wall.  It was a sound that could only be made by a large dog sliding down wooden stairs and thumping against the wall at the bottom.  I realize I will probably get letters from ASPCA or something,  but I swear to you it still makes me laugh when I think about it.

Aside from her perfume and odd dog, I have etched in my memory her unique posture.  It's not exactly her posture I remember but her habit of holding her left arm next to her side, elbow bent with her hand hanging floppily in mid air.  She had no ailment I was aware of that caused her to do this, but I think it was just her relaxed stance.  My parents tell me once I was playing a solitary game of charades and asked, "Guess who I am?" and I held my arm like Carol's.  They knew right away.

My parents were friends with Carol and her live-in boyfriend, Gino.  (Apparently, being a good Catholic Gino felt "living in sin" was, well, a sin, so whenever he would come home he would announce, "I'm house!")  Gino owned an restaurant in the Italian section of St. Louis called "The Hill" and always drove a Cadillac.  I remember many evenings spent with me sitting at the bar in his restaurant ordering Shirley Temples filled with Maraschino cherries while my parents ate, drank and laughed in the dining room.  I also remember the waiting area was filled with church pews which is where my father would retrieve my sleepy body from when it was time to go home.  And it was dark.  Not just outside, but inside as well.  Looking back it was either to provide ambiance or anonymity, maybe both.

I don't remember the first time I met Gino but my parents recall their first introduction quite fondly.  Around ten o'clock one evening my parents heard a knock on the front door.  It was Gino holding a huge plate of antipasti. No words, just food.  That served as neighborly introduction and they became fast friends. Most of my memories of Gino are not mine at all; they are from the stories my parents told me.  Gino was fond of me.  At five years old I was, by far, the youngest child I had ever seen at Gino's restaurant or his house.  That is as long as you don't count Carol's younger brother with Down Syndrome.  I have no idea how much older he was than I, but I always assumed he was an adult because he would be perfectly content to sit all evening listening to the adult conversation and was  never interested in playing with me.  Being so young, Gino would dote on me and tell me that if I was his child, I would always have the finest dresses and the best toys.  One time Gino was ribbing me about something and I responded with a dismissive gesture and said, "You Italians are all alike."  Of course, all the adults, especially Gino, loved my response enough to tell that story 40 years later.

My father tells me that Gino was in The Mob.  At five you don't think anything of your Uncle Gino having a new Cadillac every couple of months.  You just like going for rides to get ice cream.  I never even noticed the stream of mafioso that would file into the restaurant, paying their respects to Mama Patrino in the kitchen, then moving directly to the back room.  Dad always assumed Gino was fairly low in the organization, but I like to think he was an important player.  I knew Gino would never hurt a fly, but to this day I still feel that owning a restaurant frequented by The Mob served a valuable role in the history of organized crime.  I mean, who loves eating more than Italians?

Even now, I will be walking in a shop and a woman will be wearing Carol's perfume and it will instantly bring me back over thirty-five years to my life in St. Louis.  Or when my oldest child was little and a bartender friend  named a drink after her because she always wanted five Maraschino cherries.  But, more often, when I'm making homemade pasta sauce and my stove top is covered with splatters from the bubbling sauce, I am reminded of my time spent as Gino Patrino's special girl.

Kathy's Family

My friend, Kathy, is your typical mother, runner, vegetarian, assistant dean who calls her parents by their first names.  She loves college basketball and cackling at inappropriate jokes.  She's the kind of friend you can not talk to for two months and then send her an email simply saying, "I just saw a guy walk into a pole" and you just know she's cracking up on the other end of the campus.
     Kathy is interesting and all, but the most captivating thing about her is her family.  Not her husband and kids.  They're fine, but not particularly note-worthy.  However, no fiction writer could come up with these characters:  Bob, Jack, Joe and Slash.  They are Kathy's uncles and aunt.  More than likely you will never meet them and that is your loss.
     Bob, Jack and Joe are brothers to Kathy's mom, Sue.  Bob and Jack lived in the same small town where I lived and I would often see them at the grocery store.  They traveled as a pair.  For awhile I would make a point of trying to remember which was which.  But, in the end, it didn't really matter because they were always together.  I would say, "Hi, Uncle Bob.  Hi, Uncle Jack,"  and they would never recognize me.  I would then follow it with, "I'm Kathy's friend, Tonya.  The one with all the kids," to which they would reply, "Oh, sure, sure.  How are the kids?"  I'm pretty sure at that point they still didn't remember me, but they were very polite.   
     Neither of them ever married and they lived in their childhood home which was right across the street from Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt, or whatever the name of the Catholic Church was.  They were what I would call "hard-core Catholics".  They would be at mass for whatever obscure saint's day it was and would choose a candidate based on one criteria, are they Pro-Life?  The kind of devout Catholic that moderate Catholics even find a little tough to take sometimes.  But, they meant well and were true to their faith, so you have to respect that.  
     When I met them they were both semi-retired but starting a landscaping business together.  This kept them busy and entertained but still left time to take care of their older brother, Joe.  Joe had recently been moved back to Illinois from Iowa because he was bi-polar with a hint of schizophrenia and starting to lose it.  There was a story the uncles had vaguely mentioned that involved Joe's dog, (or was it a cat), and he had lost it, or killed it, or something.  Anyway, Joe was shipped to the brothers for the kind of proper supervision only old, single men can provide.
     Joe had been married to Nancy before she died in a medical mishap.  I never met Nancy and when I asked Kathy if Joe was showing signs of mental illness when she was younger she said, "I don't know.  All I remember is that Uncle Joe and Aunt Nancy had four sheep which they named after their nieces:  Kathy, Julie, Heather and April.  The sheep were all struck by lightning and killed.  Uncle Joe just left their carcasses in the field to rot."  I took that as a "yes" he showed signs of illness.
     Joe might have struggled with mental stability but he kept himself very busy.  He could be counted on to look through the household bills and maintain his notes in his office, the local coffee shop.  He would sort and categorize the bills and make notes in a shabby, spiral bound notebook.  A typical entry in the notebook might be:  "Susie arrived at 5:15 p.m. with Subway.  Bob, Jack and I ordered our usual.  Susie had tuna salad with Baked Lays and a Diet Coke."  Sure, it might seem a bit trivial to the average person, but you never know when someone might race through town screaming, "What did everyone have for dinner?!"
      Then, there's Kathy's Aunt Slash.  She really isn't her aunt, but a cousin to Bob, Jack, Joe and Sue.  And Slash really isn't her real name.  Her given name is Joan.  In the late 1950's Joan had a career as a dancer, but she assumed no one would want to watch a dancer named "Joan", so she had a stage name.  With all the options open to her, it's unclear why she chose "Phyllis", but she must have thought it held much more allure and intrigue than "Joan".  For as long as Kathy could remember, they all called her "Joan/Phyllis" (literally "Joan-slash-Phyllis") which was eventually shortened to Slash.  I'm sure in her heyday Slash was quite glamorous, but I knew her when she was using a walker and had a colostomy bag.  I hate to reduce someone to a device they had to use in their old age, but the bag plays a key role in my favorite Slash story.
    The four of them were returning from a family gathering when Bob (or was in Jack) had to pull over to the side of road because there was a slight colostomy bag back-up.  I'm not so sure there can be a "slight" problem when it comes to colostomy bags, but, nevertheless, they pulled over to clean up and correct the situation.  In true Slash-form all she said was, "Well, that'll teach me to eat gooseberry pie."
      I will always treasure my memories of the yearly Thanksgiving Day football games with our families and Bob, Jack, Joe and Slash.  Bob and Jack always had a great time, Joe always looked concerned and Slash just stood on the sidelines cheering for whoever had the ball.  It all would end with the traditional picture of all the players in a cheerleader-style pyramid.  I will always regret not being around on the Thanksgiving Day years before when Nancy fell from the pyramid and broke her arm.  I wonder if Joe just left her on the field to rot.