Author: Arminda

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My Bicycle History

I don’t experience myself as a risk taker, or as an adventure seeker. In fact, I can comfortably assure you that as the conveniently-positioned middle child (fourth of eight), I’ve happily lived my life watching others live theirs. My two older brothers and sister were constantly out doing, creating, and (oftentimes) misbehaving. My younger set of siblings (three brothers and a sister) were never not organizing activities, rallying the neighborhood, and getting into scrapes. I have always been (and still am) content with an active library card, a pile of books, and an oversized chair in which I can curl up. These days I would also add a couple of knitting projects to that pile and I’m happy happy.

When my daddy bought me my first bike (it was a beautiful red 10-speed Schwinn) I was 15 years old. We had just moved from Maryland down to North Carolina, and for the first time lived in a contained neighborhood where it was safe to ride bikes and host neighborhood block parties. Our home in Maryland was situated on a very busy stretch of highway, and my siblings and I supplied 95% of the total number of children in the neighborhood. All outdoor recreation happened in our own backyard.

My brother immediately younger than me (number 5 in our sequence of eight) also received a brand new bicycle on our move to NC. His was a dirt bike and I remember it was silver with orange lettering and had posts for his feet in case he wanted to do tricks, which he assuredly did. He ended up in the emergency room less than two weeks later after skidding across some gravel and nearly taking off his own ear in the process. But he was right back on that bike riding it off of picnic tables and whatever other surfaces that were not the ground he could find.

No table jumps for me; my bike wasn’t designed for dares. I delicately rode around the block and back home again, wishing only for a basket on my bike in which to carry a book.

Fast forward many years and I was a single mom living back in North Carolina, not ten minutes from my childhood home. Our town is littered with the most beautiful parks system of anywhere else in the world I have ever lived or traveled. They were early adopters of the nationwide Rails to Trails program, which resulted in access to more than 100 miles of greenway across the city. And all of those greenway trails have mountain bike trails leading off them for deeper exploration of the massive interconnected parks system.

A good friend suggested I get myself a bike — a mountain bike so I could experience it all! What would I possibly do with a mountain bike, I wondered out loud, while inside my head remembering my brother’s numerous trips to the ER earning him VIP status and a first-name basis with the staff. But I did it. I bought a bike and it was gorgeous — powder teal, 15 gears, hybrid tires, and the best shocks of the season. I also bought a bike rack to fit on the trunk of my Kia Optima and loaded myself up for the scariest and most thrilling adventures of my life.

I became a regular at Country Park, where I rode the trails not visible from the greenway. I thrilled at the speed I could attain on the downhill runs. I was terrified jumping fallen logs. And I was always nervous crossing the narrow bridges. But I rode and never ended up in the ER, and kept my teeth intact, and proudly displayed all my bruises from the inevitable and innumerable wrecks and falls I had. That seemingly random piece of advice to buy a bike turned into something I’m still proud to talk about to this day. Years later I had to sell that beautiful bike to its next caretaker on my way to Santa Monica, where I bought my dream bike with a basket for all my books.

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Decisions

I don’t remember much of my life before preschool. I’m not sure how many people (besides my uncannily-remembering husband) have many memories pre-three. Here are my three earliest memories:

1. Taking a walk with my mother, just the two of us holding hands on a sidewalk and my mama pointing out all the things to me as you do with a spongy toddler, so eager and willing to look where you’re pointing. And there we were side-by-side on that sidewalk when Mama says, “Oh! Look at that caterpillar,” and I looked and just as quickly, I stomped. Right on top of that caterpillar and said, “Ew. Yuck.”

2. I remember being inside my grandparents’ house. I know now they lived in Michigan, but that’s certainly not part of my memory. I only remember being on the inside on the other side of the front door, not the porch or the door itself, just the physical beingness, the noticing of a place to sit immediately in front of me. It might have been a bench or a sofa; I don’t know. I recall it lined up against the wall that stretched from the front door and that wall ended abruptly where the stairs went up on the left. Straight ahead was the kitchen. But my memory is sitting on that — let’s call it a bench — with my Pop Pop. I was little and he was holding me on his lap, laughing.

3. Preschool I remember like it was yesterday. Well, that’s not entirely true. I remember preschool playtime. I actually have no memory of class time with our teacher, Miss Libby, whose basement was converted to a play and learning room. I just remember lots of color, and it was probably the all primary colors carpet. I can still sing you the song My primary colors are one, two, three — red, yellow, and blue. The sliding glass doors opened onto a backyard playground as vast as my imagination, with a swing set + slide, a monkey gym for climbing, and a real boat! Miss Libby’s sheepdog loved the backyard as much as we did, spending the entire playtime walking the perimeter of the fully-fenced yard, never interfering with our games, but always keeping an eye on us to be sure no one was lost, missing, hurt, or being left out. 

As was our recess ritual, once we passed through the sliding glass doors of our basement classroom into the great expanse of backyard possibilities, we magically morphed into mighty superheroes, capable of any feat requiring strength, heroic acts of bravery, and daring escapes. 

I only get to go to Miss Libby’s two more times before we are all done. Before I’m one of the big kids, and ride the school bus at the top of the street, and go to kindergarten. But Mama says big girls do not suck their thumb and only big girls ride the school bus. But I just really like sucking my thumb. 

It has to be today I decide while rushing toward the open sliding glass door. I make sure I’m the first one to the treasure chest to pick the shiny gold cape I now slide over my head and onto my shoulders. I take big enough steps fast enough to see my cape fly up behind me. I walk/run straight to the swings, my heart racing against my own legs with anticipation, to the one in the middle and I sit down in the center of the seat. I tug the cape out from under me and quietly sing one of Daddy’s favorite campfire songs to myself, the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone — the thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone, while moving my two legs to scooch forward to the seat’s edge until I feel my legs drop where they’re connected to my hip bone, like a hinge. 

The tips of my toes now reach the ground and I’m a ballerina wearing the most beautiful satin slippers with pink ribbons wrapping around my ankles. I reach and stretch my toes connected to my feet, connected to my legs, and the push-me-pull-you action bends me at my knees, my two hands making tight fists around the chains fixed at my sides. The seat is holding me! I am moving! Faster and faster like I’m Flash Gordon! My toes brush against the ground, my feet are up, my legs are working, bending backward and forward, and with Shep the Sheepdog as my witness, I am flying, my golden cape billowing behind me. 

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Peach Me, It’s Summertime

Knowing that today is the Summer Solstice my heart is jumping around like we’re about to have popsicles and run through the sprinkler. I did not actually make popsicles because I only thought about it when I wrote that sentence, but it would have been a great idea. Also, I do not own a sprinkler. You know what? I can make popsicles tomorrow and we’ll eat them with our friends tomorrow night after our pizza party — we’re grilling the pizzas out on the deck. Not on the deck, but the grill is on the deck! Have you grilled your pizza? It’s a culinary experience I want for you as much as I want to eat a popsicle. I make my own pizza dough (the secret ingredient is maple syrup) and my own popsicles. Normally I love using avocado as my base, but we don’t currently have any in the house. However, that sweet, ripe, begging to be eaten peach from last Saturday’s farmers’ market might just end up blended on the end of a stick. Popsicles will be made and eaten; at this point I’m committed, and they will be draped in dark chocolate with sea salt crystals studded across their lick-able surface, presentation-ready, always. 

It’s the harvest that thrills me this time of year. Is it even possible to consume enough tomatoes? Here’s my favorite thing to do with them — thick slices on top of toasted homemade bread slathered with mayonnaise and sprinkled on top with salt and pepper. If you have it and have a hankering for it, gently cover the tomato slices with some fresh basil leaves like a light little summer blanket — not too heavy because it’s too hot, but just enough to keep the fan air from blowing you cold while you sleep — is a surprising delight. Speaking of mayonnaise, do you have a preference for brand or is that just us southerners attached to our spread like we are to the King James version of the Bible? 

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The other night I made the most delicious salad, which by the way, is my favorite cuisine. It was pure, unadulterated summertime in my mouth, exploding with seasonal surprises, and I was squealing like I was sliding down the water slide at age 12. Fresh peaches, peeled and sliced, juicy tomatoes, sliced, croutons (which I made from the last of the current loaf of bread, which you have to keep in the fridge during the summer or else it goes bad quicker than your momma can shout all your names at you because you left the refrigerator door open for too long and we’re not cooling the kitchen, mind you), and some chopped fresh basil plus some chopped fresh mint, and the easiest pour of olive oil and red wine vinegar and I topped that whole thing with some vegan feta because I have a dairy allergy or else I would have done goat cheese. Divinity in a bowl, y’all. 

And what I will not leave off our summer plate are the yellow squash and zucchini that I fry up with some onions on the stovetop until they’re basically caramelized, and I’m telling you you’ve never had anything so damn delicious, not ever in your life. And when we were kids and my mama made that squash from what we grew in our very own garden and I turned up my nose and had to plug it to get it down because we could not not eat what we’d grown — what in the Sam Hill was I even thinking way back then? Only about getting back outside tomorrow to run through the sprinkler, and getting fresh cut grass clippings stuck all over my feet, and drying myself off hanging from the dogwood tree branch I used as my personal reading nook, and eating a peach from our very own tree overhanging the back of the garage.

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Bach and My Best Friend

It was not uncommon for me to find my dad weeping as he listened to his music. From the time I was a very little girl, and I’m sure long before my arrival, he amassed an extensive record (later CD) collection across multiple genres. If I had to identify his favorite type of music to listen to, without hesitation I would say, “classical.” My dad’s dad, my Pop-Pop, was a professional organist and music teacher. He was an organist-for-hire and would play for any congregation in need of his services. I was only three when he died, so don’t have any personal memories of hearing him play. I feel like I do though, vicariously through my own dad’s love of record playing.

At the end of the day, and sometimes well into the night after the rest of the family had gone to bed, my dad would put an album on his stereo, turn the volume waaay up, turn out the lights, and sit on the sofa with his back to speakers and push play. Entire concerts were held for an audience of one and no one could appreciate those recordings more than my dad. He always listened with his eyes closed, but was never asleep.

I knew whenever I heard the unmistakable notes of Bach’s The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor resounding through the house, that my dad was thinking about and missing his dad. That composition was written for the organ and it’s one of the most powerfully moving pieces I’ve ever heard performed.

My dad used to tell me how much his dad loved that piece and would often perform it in the churches with the best acoustics while my dad would sit in a pew nearest the door, farthest from the organ, watching and listening to his father in reverential awe.

A favorite memory was once accompanying my dad and his mom to a local church when I was around seven because there was an organist performing The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. We got dressed in our Sunday best, Daddy and I, and drove to pick up Mom-Mom. It felt like such a special occasion because it was dark outside and we were going to a concert.

Daddy and I parked the car and walked up the stairs to my grandmother’s apartment and flanking her one on each side, escorted her down to the car. I inhaled my grandmother as a little girl, adored her more than anyone else in my world. She was my best friend. And that night we got to take my best friend to remember her husband. I felt the sacredness of that assignment, like I had a job to do that mattered to my Mom-Mom in ways that my seven-year-old self couldn’t understand. But I did understand loving someone so much you’d walk beside her in the cold night air to be sure she didn’t slip on the ice.

That was probably the first time I recalled my daddy crying, to music. The organist was a master at his craft and I felt the notes move inside my own chest, watched goosebumps rise on my arms when he pounded the reprise. I saw my Mom-Mom holding her own two hands with a white handkerchief clenched between them, which she sometimes dabbed her eyes with.

Music, I learned through direct observation and through personal felt experience, moves you. We were a family who felt notes all the way through ourselves. Record listening parties were a daily occurrence, which listening always and inevitably and desirably turned into dance parties.

Growing up on a daily diet of dance parties fueled by the greatest composers of all time, with intermittent bursts of emotion (sometimes tears, sometimes laughter), birthed in me a creator all my own and she is creating all her own way.

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Timing

That’s a somebody else, 
god bless them, 
situation.

Thoughts and prayers
on repeat
for 24 hours.

An innocuous 
holiday trip
to the mall.

Thank you,
we’re just browsing
the belts.

Crowds of shoppers,
outside the store,
inside the mall — 

We’re all inside
these four walls
now screaming.

Clutching the browsed belts,
we crouch and cower
inside the counter square,

Where the young cashier
holds hands
with us.

Shots were firing,
people were screaming,
fleeing the scene.

We stayed contained
behind our counter,
safe by mere chance.

We chose the right store
at the wrong time
situation.

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When I Became a Bird

Sitting on the back porch,

a nest of red cushions surrounds me,

the weight of 

The Count of Monte Cristo

drags down my hands, my arms

while scents of springtime

privet, honeysuckle, pending rain

collide in my seasonal sneezer.

Smiling spontaneously 

eavesdropping on conversations

between 

the Titmouse, the Finch and the Wren.

Between friends

you can say anything.

Dropping my book

I join the flock,

my voice ascends

tinkling with laughter

from my nest to theirs.

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Smells of Summer

My young feral instincts

understood 

raindrops’ residue on hot pavement

(without being told or taught)

meant summertime,

In the same way 

cut grass goodness

dictated and begged

our nightly revelries — 

barefoot

(Ghost in the Graveyard

firefly chasing

front porch sleeping).

Working in the garden,

turned up dirt

lingering and clinging to

Daddy’s wrist and arm hairs

muddied the kitchen sink

spraying earth fumes, 

inhalation inevitable,

unavoidable,

welcomed.

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The Waiting Game

“Waiting for . . . the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No. . . just waiting.” From Dr. Suess’ Oh, The Places You’ll Go

Terrifyingly, 
she lost consciousness 
in my arms and I
thank any and all 
gods attending us — 
for our Nurse Practitioner friend,
(now family) 
reviving her, and 
for Gigi
(also now family)
who had the presence of mind and 
free hands to 
call 911, and 
for the paramedics 
who arrived in minutes,
Amen.

They took her away 
for her second ambulance ride 
in as many weeks, and 
thus began the waiting, 
the longest day of my life.

Tears were cried,
hugs were given, and
received,
more prayers were prayed,
calls were made, 
and we waited. 
Six am until ten pm on that 
longest day’s ever night 
for a conversation
with the doctor — 
any doctor — 
for news on my girl.

She was 
so 
very 
very 
sick, 
the doctor said, and 
thank goodness 
they had her 
right where she needed to be, 
back in a hospital bed with 
tubes going in, and 
PICC lines coming out,
for the myriad medicines going in.

They said she would be 
staying 
for a long 
long while — 
for this infection 
consuming her lungs,
was waiting, too.

We can play 
(and win)
the waiting game,
we cried,
hunkered down
for a long 
winter’s month — 
warming up 
phone lines,
facetimes,
and bowls of soup
between us —
the distance always too far
for our waiting hearts.

Days and nights
became weeks
waiting
for the medicines 
to work,
for the chest tube 
to drain,
for the doctor’s calls
to be non-emergent,
for the hospital
to let me in,
for my tears
to stop,
for my fear 
to dissolve,
for our nightmare
to be a bad dream,
for permission
to go home.

The waiting
ended
(finally) and 
we drove away,
leaving the waiting,
(impossible to see)
behind us,
packed to the roof,
as we were,
with living.


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The Leaving

I remember the leaving more than the being gone.

How my best friend drove us to the airport,

hours after he woke next to my sleepless night. I remember

how I watched him walk around the bed we shared, emotionless,

to kiss me goodbye like he was punching his timecard at the end of his final shift, and

then tossing it over his shoulder into the backseat of his car

as he drove away, never once looking in the rearview mirror. 

I remember feeling so much lighter when I heard his key turn the lock

from the outside, and how our windows faced south and the parking lot was

to the east, so I didn’t have to watch him walk away. All that was left was the leaving,

the packing was finished, and the instantly-grown-up baby, my girl, got to wake up

to Mommy’s kisses, filled with emotion at the start of our big adventure, together

just the two of us. Her brand-new toddler-sized suitcase was packed with her most important

possessions the night before I slept not at all, minus her bed friends — 

Jasmine, the bunny, and her yellow blanket — who got zipped up once she was up. I remember

the suitcase was red, yellow, and green with wheels and a handle she could push, or pull,  

next to me carrying everything else, on our way back east. The two women seated in front of 

our two seats, I remember spoke loudly about how their three-year-olds (40 years ago) 

would never have pushed the seat in front of them, or ever cry for any reason. 

And I remember feeling so much lighter when I drowned out their voices 

to comfort my terrified toddler, whose ears were exploding from too much pressure 

on the inside, and then I remembered how happy I was that my daughter was

using her voice.

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First the Burning

Surely,
I’m not the first
woman
to get burned,
consumed,
reduced to ash

Who 
didn’t just step
too close 
to the flame, but
walked myself — 
like Shadrach
Meshach, and
Abednego — 
into the furnace

Who 
learned firsthand, 
at his hand,
what love is not
through baptism by immersion in 
the crucible’s cradle of heat,
rocked into oblivion,
burned beyond recognition

Who 
looked one last time
for herself
reflected back, and
the image spoke of
recognition, of
a glimmer, of
hope in a
pile of ash

Who 
heard herself
through the looking glass
demand
she rise — 
like a phoenix
with borrowed wings — 
to leave 
the burning
behind.