Happens on a long ride. They blend and meld and merge after a week or two on the road, because motorcycles are so much more about the journey than the destination. Riding open and exposed, one is ever lured by the soft murmur of the sleepy byways, the old roads, and one rides through portals of time and is drawn, always, into the country.
I have spent far too little time with my sister over the years. Part of it is age, I am seven years older and Debbie was only 10 or 11 when I left home for good. Part of it was the battle cry I took up when I left at 18 all those years ago: "Happiness is Florida in the rear view mirror". Most of it was just me. My incessant need to find out what was over the next hill, around that curve and -- where does that road lead?
I am currently sleeping on a bed upon which I last laid my head more than sixty years ago and many miles away.
Got to tell you about that bed.
When I was very young, we still lived on the island where I was born. It doesn't exist anymore. Oh, it's still physically there, but; the long, empty expanse of land jutting into the cold waters of the North Atlantic, with its potato farms inland and small fishing villages along its coasts, is no longer. The great metropolis to the west has metastasized along its length and it is now a sardine can of city workers.
But in those days it was still an island, remote, the hinterland. We lived in a little village on the Great South Bay and our house and my grandparent's house were across a canal from each other. Being Catholic, we did not eat meat on Fridays. So, often, my grandmother would make clam chowder -- and not that gelatinous goop they have in Boston, no this was that tart, tangy, red chowder, filled with tiny cubed potatoes and carrots and fennel and those little clams just dug that day from the shallows of the bay just yards away. Sometimes I would get to go fetch it.
Picture this: a little boy (maybe 5?) embarking upon the great adventure of taking one of those small milk cans, climbing down his dock to a small dory and rowing across a great expanse of water (less than 100 feet) to his grandparents house (my parents and grandparents peeking out their windows, of course, at every stroke -- but I didn't know that) to collect dinner. Sometimes I would get to spend the night with them. And when I did, one of two things would happen -- they would put a cot between the two beds they had or I'd get to sleep in one. The same one I'm sleeping on now. And I go to sleep feeling small and somehow -- old hard-ass combat vet and 'scooter tramp that I am -- safe.
That my sister would still have those beds in one of her guest rooms -- they are really well made and of good wood and look not that different than when they came from the maker's shop -- and perhaps one other thing, tell you all you need to know about my sister. The other thing is, a few years back I was helping a young friend of mine and we were working with a pitching coach. At one point I tossed the ball back to the coach and he commented: "Hey, you've got quite an arm yourself." "Ha," I said, "that's nuthin' -- y'oughta see my sister's!".
Debbie is a four foot, nuthin' ball of constant energy and motion. She's the one who knows and remembers everyones' birthday and how they're doing and their kid's names and, it seems, everything. She is the rock and the glue. Mom and MiMi. And she takes care of everybody, from Big John, her husband of more than thirty years, who loves her like life itself and who's been my family so long the "in-law" part makes no sense, to the kids to the grandkids. She even puts up with the world's worst big brother, a fact that never ceases to amaze.
But the best thing is, she smiles a lot. She does that because she's a happy woman who loves her family and her life.
A friend of mine used to always say: "Love. What was the question?"
 |
| "Chops" & "California Doc". |
My nephew, Joel, John and Deb's oldest, loves them 'scooters as much as I do. His Club was having its annual bash and he invited me to go with him. It's a good group, not 1%, just a bunch of guys who love to ride and party and hang. I got to be the proud Uncle, tellin' his Brothers, many of them my age: "...see, he didn't pick this 'scooter stuff up in the street (though his Dad rides too)". And, maybe, he got to be the proud nephew ("This is my Uncle Tim, he rode it all the way from California, man!).
A good bash. Lots of Clubs from the Christian MCs to 1% outlaws and there was no trouble and nobody got bent. And that, for those of you in the Life, tells you a lot about his Club.
I got to tell Joel, much to his surprise, about his great-grandfather and his Harley, roaring about when you started them with bicycle pedals.
We hung all day, laughing and talking and hangin' and then got to go home and eat eggplant parmigiana made the way my Mother used to make it.
I'm having way too much fun for an old man.
No comments:
Post a Comment