Tag: memories

A Little Twist of Texas

Recently I read Linda Raven Moore’s A LITTLE TWIST OF TEXAS. This is the story of Linda getting on her motorcycle and traveling solo from California to Texas… Well, sort of. As any classic rock singer will tell us, life on the road isn’t easy, and a portion of Linda’s trip was made without the motorcycle, but adaptability is part of the tale.

Because Linda is a gifted storyteller, I was completely drawn into her narrative. I fretted over the idiosyncracies of “Beastie,” the motorcycle who could be really known only from a long trip such as Linda’s. I felt the buffeting of the wind that caused delays along the way. I marveled at the amount of thought and planning that goes into everything: what and how one packs for an extended motorcycle trip. Where and what to eat when you’re crossing miles of uninhabited desert. The pain of unlayering and undressing just to use the bathroom.

Linda’s keen appreciation for the sights and people along the way brings her story to life. Her humor and her willingness to be frank about her vulnerabilities and insecurities make this more than just the story of a road trip. It’s also the interior journey of a woman who can handle bumps and detours as she follows her dream.

I hope there are more trips and books to describe them.

My Own Great Motorcycle Adventure

My first boyfriend was Tim G., and damn if I can remember what kind of motorcycle he had in high school, but I was forbidden to ride it. Oh, the temptation! On frosty ninth-grade mornings, I would stand with my friends on the circle in front of our school, anticipating the engine sound that would herald Tim’s arrival. It was the seventies, so Tim had his Easy Rider helmet, much like this:

And the coolest leather jacket ever, which I wish I had a photo of, but it looked a little like this one, only better:

My heart would race as he drove up. I was totally crazy about that boy. Which of course meant that when he asked me to take a trip on his bike to Cheaha State Park, I ignored my parents’ dire warnings of how much trouble I’d be in if I got on that motorcycle.

It was one of the best days ever. Quite cold as we neared the top of the mountain, but that just meant I hugged Tim even tighter. My instinct was to pull against the motorcycle on curves, but I finally just placed my trust in Tim and did what he told me. It was invigorating to ride through that much physical beauty and feel so close to it all.

There was one thing no one had warned me about, however. When your hair is even longer than this:

you don’t leave it down. Hair doesn’t really cinematically flow in the wind when it’s sticking out from under a helmet. Instead, it gets whipped around so violently that when you get back from your eighty-five-mile round trip, your hair is nothing but snarls and tangles.

Of course, I couldn’t go home looking like that. My parents would have known exactly what I’d been up to. I sat on the living room floor in front of Tim’s mother, one of the truly sweetest ladies I ever knew, and she painstakingly combed out every tangle and tried not to make me cry in the process.

My parents didn’t know until years later about that trip, long after Tim was just a memory. But a good memory, because every awful pull of the comb was worth that glorious day on the back of a motorcycle with my first love.

Another October


John in 1993

Today while taking a nap, I dreamed about my friend John. It was a silly dream, not worth repeating (as if anyone is ever interested in someone else’s dreams anyway), but it did remind me that John would have turned 41 on October 5.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, in October of 1996, Tom, our friend Amy (Rex’s first mom!), and I were in Washington, D.C., volunteering for what would be the last display in its entirety of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. I could write a book about those cold, amazing days in our capital, but I won’t do it here.

A brief history.

On October 11, 1987, the Quilt included 1,920 panels and was displayed for the first time on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The Quilt returned to Washington, D.C. in October of 1988, when 8,288 panels were displayed on the Ellipse in front of the White House. The entire Quilt was again displayed on the National Mall in 1992 and 1996, when it contained approximately 37,440 individual panels.

Five panels that I’d made with the help of my mother and Tom, as well as my friends Amy, Lynne, Lisa, Vicki, Nora, Shawn, and Shelley, were among those 37,440.

After we returned from Washington, John and James were over for a visit. We looked at photos, but John didn’t really want to talk that much about the Quilt. One of my panels was for John’s former boyfriend, Jeff. However John may have grieved the loss of Jeff, he was looking forward to his future with James in that October when he turned 31.

None of us had the slightest inkling that two months later, John would be dead. What had seemed an early diagnosis of Kaposi’s Sarcoma, and the promise of the new protease inhibitors, all happened just a little too late to save him.

I know a lot of people don’t like autumn. The days get shorter. The weather turns cold. The falling leaves remind us of loss and decay. I don’t know why I love this season so much. But overall, I’d rather think of all the friends’ and family’s birthdays I celebrate during autumn, all the good people who’ve been part of my life, and all the ways that dark times are always, always followed by rebirth in the spring, new friendships, renewed hope, and a planet that has so much to teach us if we only pay attention to its cycles.

From the NAMES Project Foundation web site:

Funds Raised by the Quilt for Direct Services for People with AIDS: over $3,250,000 (U.S.)
Number of Visitors to the Quilt: 15,200,000
Number of 12’x12′ Sections of The Quilt: 5,748
Number of Panels in the Quilt: approximately 46,000
Number of Names on the Quilt: More than 83,900 (The names on the Quilt represent approximately 17.5% of all U.S. AIDS deaths.)
Size : 1,293,300 square feet (the equivalent of 275 NCAA basketball courts with walkway, 185 courts without walkway)
Miles of Fabric: 52.25 miles long (if all 3’x6′ panels were laid end to end)
Total Weight: More than 54 tons
NAMES Project Chapters: 20
International Affiliates: 43


Amy, Becky, Tom in 1996

Strange and sad

Our weather is being quite lovely. It’s strange to realize that on this day last year, we made our decision to evacuate because of Hurricane Rita. Still stunned by images of what Katrina had done, our biggest motivator was getting my elderly mother somewhere in case we lost power or had any flooding. Among other health concerns, the heat alone would have been deadly to her.

Of course, like so many Houstonians, we got caught in the gridlock and weren’t going anywhere. Something like 15 miles in eight hours, I think.

So we went to Green Acres where we found friends and food and card games. I’m sad, because even though Rita spent her fury elsewhere, the year since has brought losses we never anticipated back then. I am still so grateful to Lynne and Craig for taking such good care of my mother, Tom, me, Tim, Margot, Guinness, River, and Lazlo.

I remember when we came home and Tim and Tom were cleaning up the yard, because of damage from high winds, that we got a delivery of candy from Frank, someone we knew through Live Journal. A few weeks later, we stopped hearing from Frank. Wherever you are, Frank, thank you again.

Remembering

One thing I learned while grieving the deaths of people I loved is that it’s hard to pinpoint the moment when a shift occurs: when the gigantic loss that has shadowed at least some part of each day becomes another part of my emotional landscape. The loss becomes so familiar that I no longer note it unless something occurs to draw my attention back to it. An image. A few words. A question. A dream.

An anniversary.

I think it took about three years before I stopped consciously mourning September 11, 2001, every day. Even though I’d longed for that change, I didn’t realize when it happened. But at some point, I recognized that it had happened by a sudden awareness of its absence.

Mourning is ongoing, but it is not constant.

For the last few months, I’ve immersed myself in the events of September 11, 2001, again. I’ve read hundreds of blogs. Looked at thousands of photos. Watched videos. Researched federal, state, city, and school district documents. Read as many interviews as I could bear with first responders, survivors, employees–and with the families and friends of people who died that day. I did this hoping that it would make me write more authentic fiction.

It was all a reminder that scar tissue isn’t the same as healing. Scar tissue means an injury has been dealt with, but it left damage. However, even with scar tissue, the body still functions.

And even in grief, every day offers gifts of laughter, friendship, love, art, dogs, nature…

One of my resources has been Aftermath by Joel Meyerowitz. Meyerowitz overcame a lot of frustrating obstacles to make a photographic record of the recovery efforts in Lower Manhattan because he thought it was important to capture history. The book consists mostly of the pictures he shot, but the limited text is powerful. Here’s an account of a day at the World Trade Center recovery site:

One afternoon, when I was late coming downtown, I was greeted excitedly by several members of the Arson and Explosion Squad as I walked onto the pile. “Oh, Joel, you missed an amazing sight today,” one of them exclaimed. “We were on our knees, digging in the smoke, when all of a sudden we were surrounded by Monarch butterflies–swarms of them flitting around us, tapping on our helmets in the smoke. One of the guys stood up and said, ‘Souls.’ “


You are all remembered.

From the yearbook

Timothy James Beck readers who remember details (and I know you’re out there; thank you for e-mailing) may recall a conversation between Sheila and Blaine in I’M YOUR MAN about Sheila’s nemesis, Sydney. Back in high school, Sydney was on the yearbook staff and was responsible for publishing a photo of Sheila on a bad hair day. Sheila was coming down a flight of stairs and looking at the photographer, which made her appear to have a double chin.

Even on the most stellar day of my life, I never came close to looking as good as Sheila at her worst. Nor did I, to the best of my knowledge, have a nemesis on the yearbook staff. But thanks to Lynne’s yearbook, I do have a scan of the photo that inspired Sheila’s memory.

I was twelve at the time. And yeah. The Beatles were still together. Hereafter, we will return to the “35” myth.

see my adolescent humiliation