Monthly Archive

Against my own resolutions, I bought myself peonies. They are hot pink, and not yet open, full of the promises of the coming year.

It is a new year, a new number, full of the hope and empowerment that do-it-yourself projects like window repairs can bring. I see through a clear pane of glass now, a bit more protected, and no longer avoiding the jagged edges that I had simply covered with a board. I can see, and the window can be broken again without the helplessness I felt before. Repair is possible. Only… would I want to do that again?

At the end of 2007, I said I would not buy myself flowers. With a new sense of self-sufficiency, I wonder if I should amend my previous thoughts. Peonies are in bloom now, as they always are right about now, and I need them. I need the beauty, and I want the things I wanted when I wanted flowers to be given to me. Only… those things are not in my control. It would be much nicer not to want. Or would it?

It has been a year of heartbreak and hereafters. Perhaps I have worn my heart on my sleeve too much, allowing myself to be an open target for criticism or misuse. I have indeed been criticized, but praised sometimes, too. As for the misuse… well, that was a bit harder to bear.

Still, I have met special people in the past year, and learned many things about myself, about the world. There are still so many wonderful souls wandering, and a world still left to find. Love remains, in children, but also in hopes. And perhaps once, there will be some safe place, visible in the distance, so I can take my sails down, coast in, throw an anchor. It is no island I seek, but a protected harbor on the edge of life, a warm harbor full of lights and sounds and spices and splendor. A good place.

But for now, I’ll enjoy my peonies, and the new summer sun. I will navigate through the waves and wind, and also through still waters, quiet moments left just to watch the stars.

My dad always knew right where the heating pad was. It was gloriously soft, like felt, as I remember from the odd time that I had to use it when I was younger.

My dad used to complain about his back, which in my non-empathetic youth, I was convinced was overplayed a tad bit, along with all discussions of various ailments around the kitchen table when members of his family visited.

Where did he hurt his back first? In the Army? working as a carpenter? somewhere… Now I have the unfortunate understanding of just how painful these sorts of things can be. My first injury a few years ago involved a two-door rental car, a move scheduled less than a month away, and a large, special needs child with a skin rash. I could barely walk after I overdid whatever I did, and was convinced that I was dying. I must have inherited that knack for dramatically painful medical conditions… or at least describing them in those terms.

Or maybe it was just bad luck. Every once in a while, the back flares up again, and luck had it that this happened yesterday, on a lovely day that I had planned to walk, to absorb the city and the excitement. Instead, I woke up after not enough sleep, took Advil and went back to bed.

The Advil helped a little. A few hours later, I awoke and looked around the quiet house, amazed to be only sore, and not in immediate pain. I flipped on an R&B radio show that always makes me happy, and drank some tea on my porch. It is not what I had planned for the day, but maybe it is what I needed.

Today I woke up, a little sad to feel left behind and forgotten, but with a new frame of mind. A friend came over to help me repair a broken window, and I was in heaven. Now I know how to do it myself! A feat accomplished with joy, conversation, a nice dinner, and time with a good friend… a fine day indeed.

Sometimes life throws us disappointments, upsets plans, but perhaps for reasons we understand only later. Maybe these are our clearest moments: quiet times pared down to the most simple things, a laugh, a kind word, and a thoughtful gesture. And we realize that these are the things that matter the most.

Yesterday, I found myself hopeful, excited by the symbolic gesture in a new name for the Department of Mental Retardation.

Those hopes were dashed when I saw the final Senate budget this morning. Despite amendments filed to restore cuts to crucial programs, those cuts remain. The budget for human services overall is not only disappointing; it is cruel. Some gains are there for select programs, but it sure hurts to look at the things that affect daily life for so many people, and realize that belts will tighten even more, and some will go without… again. I know that the economic realities are hurting everyone now, but these are programs that were suffering through the best of times. They may well now be on the brink of collapse.

For all of the happy moments we celebrate in symbolic gestures like inclusion classrooms, we continue to underfund programs that help people with disabilities. The ultimate price of this systemic abuse is high, as human beings lose their ability to work and to live somewhat independently. It trickles down levels, making the doling out of portions into a game. And far too often, those who figure out how to play that game and have the time to devote to it beat out the ones who need help the most. More and more families find themselves also unable to work, while the care of a loved one falls on their shoulders. We have let this situation grow increasingly worse for years–at least twenty years now. The crisis in the economy only intensifies the situation, as competition for those dwindling funds grows, too.

Names mean a lot. Gestures mean a lot. Now let’s put our money where our mouth is.

Could this really be the day? Could this be the day that Massachusetts strikes through a department name that shocked me when I moved to this state? The wording in the Senate budget amendment would indicate that it is, and the joint committee that gets the budget next is not likely to change “Department of Developmental Services” back to its present name. It has been years that Massachusetts advocates have been working to change the name, and it seems that this will be the year.

The Department of Mental Retardation.

I thought that sort of name had gone the way of the institutions… Unfortunately, we still have those, too, in Massachusetts.

Mental retardation.

My son has this diagnosis along with autism. Those clinical diagnoses jump around when no one can find a clear explanation for why a person is not like everyone else. “Mental retardation” is a name I have mostly avoided using, largely because of its highly presumptive and predictive quality. “Developmental disability” seems to allow for more latitude, more possibilities. And I really prefer to refer to his abilities, rather than his disabilities, even on the most challenging days.

Beyond my own son, who does qualify for DMR’s minimal services no matter the name of the department, I wonder if a name change might not highlight the growing need for the forgotten developmental disabilities in the Commonwealth. Our own DMR houses the Division of Autism, which should serve all individuals on the autism spectrum, not just those who fit into DMR’s eligibility requirements, which are largely based on IQ, more stringently so for adults. There are a good number of people who have developmental disabilities who do not have IQs under 70. So who serves them? The Department of Mental Health sees “Asperger’s syndrome,” and hands fly up in the air: “That’s not ours! To DMR with you! Away!” Even those with multiple mental health diagnoses get pinned with an autism spectrum disorder, and DMH flies away. But right now, DMR does not provide services to individuals with Asperger’s syndrome, either.

Of course, the issue is really one of funding, and that rant is yet to come. Some who opposed the name change point to that very issue of funding, and the sympathy that the term “mental retardation” inspires. My son has been the special education mascot once or twice in his life, and I found those moments to be ones of circus-like shame. Perhaps the notion of “those poor people” inspires some guilt-ridden legislative line items, but does it inspire understanding and real systems change? Does it give people real lives, or does it perpetuate the fear? Not to say that funding is not important: I imagine that if the well had not run dry, DMH or DMR (DDS?) in this day and age would happily ensure that all people with disabilities get what they so desperately need. They would coordinate services rather than playing ping-pong to maintain a barely manageable caseload. I truly believe that every person who works for these agencies wants nothing more than to be able to provide appropriate services.

But lest I let these dreams of coordinated case management and appropriate services fly away with my point, let me get back to the very basic problem with a name like “Department of Mental Retardation.”

My son, with a diagnosis of “severe mental retardation” should, by definition, not gain cognitive abilities above those of a four year old.

How the hell does anyone know that?

And yet, with that prescription, who will ever help him to realize his potential, and not those of a clinical diagnosis?

Does a name mean anything? Oh yes. Sticks and stones have far less power.

A name means everything. And perhaps, this year in Massachusetts, a name will mean NOT keeping people in their place, but supporting their development. Maybe, just maybe, a name will mean change.

The job was this: I went to a beautiful house and turned pages, pronounced words, kept watch until he had finished, or maybe even fallen asleep.

It was my second semester of graduate school. In some haze of unemployment and reverse culture shock after a year in France, I had accepted an offer for a teaching assistantship and free classes, all intended to end in a master’s degree in French literature.

My first semester teaching was a stroll though an emotional minefield as undergraduate students trampled my best intentions. On the other hand, I wrote my own papers that were deemed brilliant, or at least pretty good. The editor of a literary journal invited me to be her assistant. The graduate advisor asked me to stay for my doctorate. The juxtaposition of experiences was dizzying, especially in the wake of the advances attempted by a former professor and employer (I babysat his children). That moment he smoked pot in his car and grabbed my hand was a sexual harassment moment that I scarcely recognized at the time, much less attempted to address. In fact, I was convinced that I had mistaken that strange event afterward, glad still that I had grabbed my hand back before he put it where he had apparently intended.

Instead of dwelling on what may have happened, I buried myself in books and music—live music that had become amazingly accessible to me when I started dating one of the pop music critics in the area. I buried myself also in that music critic, a tall, unshakable, wonderful guy with a way of making the world go away, a guy who remained childlike and may still have that capacity, as I imagine him still working in a record store, turning new music on his turntable and his head and his words. Most of all, I knew that he adored me—a mutual feeling—and we explored the city as if it were brand spanking new.

The next semester, after a summer of successful teaching and a multitude of private students who paid very well, I found myself in a pedagogy seminar—something that would have helped enormously in my first semester. My private students and the income they brought were gone, so when the pedagogy professor announced a tutoring gig, I ran up after class to learn the details.

The student was one of hers, an intermediate French grammar and conversation student who was housebound at times. I collected the assignments, and made the call.

K. was twenty years old, a friendly kid with his own passion for music and a weekly radio show. K. was not doing so well when I met him, though, and I talked to his sister while I waited for the pastor to finish his weekly visit.

K. had a protective family, to say the least. When he had been diagnosed with leukemia five years earlier, the family gathered, and decided that the cancer would never win. With love and laughter, they endured, keeping the world at bay. K. was indeed still alive, very much so, despite the recent chemotherapy treatments that had prompted me to his home that day.

We looked at the current chapter of French grammar, and at some point, inevitably, K. changed the subject. His real love really was music, and he could talk about that for hours longer than he could conjugate irregular verbs. I took my boyfriend once, which thrilled them both. We attempted some conversations in French, and I brought French pop music, which K. did enjoy. In fact, the reason that the university was providing a tutor in French, and not some other subject, was that K. dreamed of going to Paris. He loved the French language, and kept that thought of travel as a bright light at the end of an exhausting and sickening tunnel, a beacon of hope for recovery.

The treatments were grueling. Sometimes K.’s sister or mom called me to say he was not up to that day’s session, and I did not see him. He was hospitalized at times, and then, finally, he returned to his real class. My job ended.

Our intermediate French classes had the distinction, the true honor, of reading a literary masterpiece. Not only did our students read the masterpiece, but they put on skits about it with a distinguished audience: the author himself.

Alain Robbe-Grillet died recently, a fact that may well have been rejoiced by some intermediate French students from those years. Some surely remember the book that they struggled through, certain that it would prevent them from earning the A they had strived for all semester. They struggled for sure, wondering at first if it was the deficiency of their language skills or the excessive amounts of alcohol from the night before that made the book such a bitch to read. At a point, they realized that it was the book itself–a cruel joke–that was so impenetrable. Thought provoking, it was, and the thoughts it seemed to provoke in my own students seemed to be ones of anger, perhaps even violence. The language is relatively simple, in fact, but the story is an endless loop of beginnings, slight changes, and frustrations. The question and answer session for the author ended, as I recall, with the author shouting at undergraduates who meekly asked him what he intended in the book. “Have you never read your own authors?” he challenged them. “Have you never read Faulkner?”

And despite that, K. did perform the skit for the great author, and the author laughed. I could barely believe that this was the same kid who could not hold his head up for most of the afternoons that I spent with him.

I saw him again, on his twenty-first birthday, celebrating at a club with a band he loved, joking that he was going to have a drink—a real no-no, he told me. He energetically remarked also that he had planned that long awaited trip. His sister was going with him to Paris. He was in remission, and had been for a long time by then.

My career at the institution of higher learning unraveled in unpredictable ways… unpredictable to me at the time, but damned obvious now in retrospect. I had left, quite shaken, and never set foot in the halls that I had once loved, vowing never to see some people again in my life. And I have not.

Several months later, my brother tossed a newspaper on my plate. “Hey, isn’t that the kid you tutored?” he asked.

K. had gone home, the obituary said, for Christmas holidays after treatment following a minor relapse. His doctors had thought that the benefits of being with family during holidays outweighed the risk of leaving the hospital. He went home one last time, and caught pneumonia, and he died.

I found the funeral home, and wandered in, hoping selfishly that I would not see anyone from the university. I had to go, though, knew I had to. I saw the young body, laid out in a suit and tie like some wax figure representing K.—and not well. The life was gone, and life was what K. had always had.

The family was visibly shaken, there only in body—hollow ones, it seemed. For all the time that I knew them, they never allowed themselves to think that K. might die, and for so long, they were right. His father saw me. “Why?” he sobbed to me. And I didn’t know why.

I had no idea what to say, and I also knew that at those moments, it never matters, because words mean nothing when life is stripped bare. All that matters are the souls that remain, that remind, that wound, yet repair. All that matters is time, which will move forward, painfully, persistently farther and farther from the physical presence of the ones we loved, until they can come back to us—we realize they never left—through the love that remains in our hearts.

The men in suits were out again today. I see them often in my neighborhood, as I pass several funeral homes any way I turn to head out into the world from where I live. This morning was a sunny, cool morning, and the men today were attired in a professional black: older men who own proper suits for such occasions, men who are accustomed to facing the end of life.

A morbid curiosity leads me into the lives that will be remembered on mornings when the hearse is parked out front. I cannot help but wonder what happened, and why. The cars and the people who gather lead me to assumptions, some ordinary, some tragic. Some days I can barely make it through the streets as cars hunt for parking, fire engines or police cars line the streets, people walk sadly to that one place. Tragic. Sometimes, there are few cars, a few people out front, some laughing, some smoking, some simply quiet. Ordinary.

Morning suits are for funerals. The evening suits are of a different sort. Visitation brings the stragglers, the people who appear because they know they should, the ones who would have, should have made it to the hospital earlier, the young people dressed in the best they can muster, reluctantly inching closer to the door to pay respects that they barely know how to pay. But they do.

I remember one funeral, years ago, sitting in the front in a mint green dress with a boyfriend nearly as young as I was. I smiled as seemed necessary, waited, made the uncomfortable friends feel that they had done the thing I most needed them to do—and they had—which was just to be there, however they could manage. I thought on that day how short a life can be, how precious the few moments we have in this world are, and how fragile our abilities remain with us. It was nearly twenty-three years ago now, a death on Flag Day, a visitation on Father’s Day, a funeral on a quiet day when the world began again in a new way for me, with a strange sort of beauty that comes only when you know that someone you love has at last been given the peace that life never offered.

In a few short moments, the three kids and I will head out to Dairy Queen. It is a treat, to be sure, but symbolically it is an attempt to salvage a little joy from this weekend. I really don’t care about ice cream tonight; I just want to leave the house and have some feeling of being a happy family.

I have come to realize that the same issues that made me give up custody of my son with developmental disabilities in August are the same that may make it impossible for me to take him overnight at all. Those issues all revolve around one thing, and that one thing is perhaps the most damning defining moment for a person with a disability.

That one thing is another person. It is absolutely necessary to have more than one adult to take care of my son at any given time. This does not require a mere warm body. To help, the person needs to be vigilant about safety issues, but also patient enough to withstand a bite, a grab, a few solid hours of changing pants if his tummy is upset, or sitting outside his room on a wild night that he cannot fall asleep. It takes a person who will show up at the times that are likely to be challenging, and show up reliably. It takes a person who doesn’t mind the other kids and the holes in the wall, the clutter everywhere (which would be less of an issue with more help). It takes a strong person, who can help me get him out of harm’s way if he flops on the ground—sometimes inconveniently—and refuses to move, a person who can do this all with a smile, and some degree of understanding. It takes a kind person. It takes a person who will be all those things for the going state rate of $10.84 per hour… well, assuming that my son’s present custodian reapplies him for the MassHealth benefits that pay it.

Last year, when I was the custodial parent and called the shots, I was offered an opportunity to return to school in a prestigious disability program. I would never have attempted a demanding fellowship if I had not been incredibly lucky at first. A full-of-life, smart, loving young woman came from miles away to help me care for my son nearly everyday for several months. For her, as much as she liked us, it was a career move, and a good one at that. Life was good for all of us, and we laughed a lot, had fun. But it was inevitable that she had to move on to greener (and more lucrative) pastures when opportunity called.

Before she left, I started looking, and did not find in the six weeks I knew she was leaving. Within a short time, I was spending most of my time without children advertising the position in every thinkable way, then interviewing candidates. Some interesting people came into our lives for moments: a Harvard pre-med student, a part-time nanny who was working on a master’s in social work, a stately woman whose father had been killed by Idi Amin, and many, many more. Before finding help, I conducted thirty-two interviews, hired ten marvelous candidates (all of whom quit by the first day after coming for orientation), fired two (negligence does not even begin to describe..), and tried to write a grant for a project that would link college students and families of children with special needs. The project seemed doomed from the start in the midst of various regulations and other difficulties, not the least of which was the prospect of defining myself as a non-profit organization. It seemed a bit much. I sat in on organizational meetings around a state law that had been passed to address the problems with this workforce. As my studies progressed, I shaped my work around this issue, one that affects so many people. I was exhausted, and still had no answers, not even from the highest levels of state agencies. At last, months later, we finally found one person, a caring young lady who had known my son for several years. Relief…

After one difficult evening, though, she failed to show up for work the next day. She had hurt her back, she said in a message, and I called to see if she was all right. She never answered her phone, or email, to me again. The fallout was jarring to the kids, and to me. I advertised again, somewhat cynically realizing that the people who enter our home also enter our hearts. I started the quest again, but this time had no luck. Ultimately, I quit a job I had taken at the end of my fellowship, telling my supervisor through tears that I could not financially support my kids and care for them, too. And then, I made an even more difficult decision, the hardest thing… It was perhaps the only choice, but in so many ways it has always felt like the worst choice.

I gave up.

I realize that this statement goes against my happiest thoughts about my family, the ones like those I wrote several weeks ago, finding the joy in an ordinary day. The day I described there was an ordinary day… extraordinary, to be honest.

The truth is that there are moments that are hard, grueling, moments when the facts of toilet training deficiencies and behaviors resulting from nonverbal realities can bring me to my knees, literally.

I posted nothing here last week about Mother’s Day. Recovering from another back injury after a walk with my son, I was not in a joyous mood about the holiday, despite the efforts from all of my kids. They tried, as much as kids can; they really did. It was not my weekend to spend with them, and changing things around for a day never works very well; it is confusing, most of all to a child with autism. I have never had a bad back, but I cannot lift an obstinate 120 pounds, either.

It is moments like this that destroy the mother-child bond. I find myself less of a mother as I admit this, but I can feel it for days after something bad happens. I feel it in my recoiling when my son hugs me, my reluctance to endure another bite tearing me apart as I want to love him freely and without hesitation. Oh, I know he does it not out of cruelty, but out of frustration, in moments that his ears hurt, or that I failed to understand him, or that he just needed to feel that sensation for some reason I can only try to acknowledge.

Agencies across our Commonwealth, across the country, struggle with the lack of funding for people who have no voice, or a quiet one. Families besides mine are being ripped apart by lack of support, despite the best efforts from groups that lobby for the small legislative victories that lead to systems change. Maybe attitudes change along the way, and pave the way toward better times. But when money is tight and economic predictions are dire, altruism often takes the hit first.

There has to be a better way.

I want. I wish. Not “I need”—that’s justifiable.

Desire puts it all on the line, makes the moment, opens the door for another to walk in… or walk away.

I regret the words the moment they jump from my mouth, escape onto the page. I want them back in my head where they cannot jinx me, or hurt me, or subject me to the criticisms or objections that I do not want to face. Safe.

But no.. I would say them again.

The thoughts in our heads die without expression. Maybe some of them should do just that. But others… oh, others are life itself. And yes, I do want…

Sun shines, moments reflected in a pond and shimmering. More peaceful than silence, the birds and breeze sing in some forgotten paradise, far from the madness of the everyday, but still right around the corner.

Night comes, and the city enchants, throwing lights, lamplights, stars, glistening high into the air somewhere near a sliver of moon suspended between buildings.

I don’t often feel such confusion, wondering what nights like this are supposed to mean, if they are more than simply splendid nights. An opening door, warm air from a kitchen, bread, cheese, interrupts the cool air, and then to wander into something wonderful, something I am afraid I could come to depend on… We walk, then later, an accordion, voices, the froth on top. A kiss. Can wonderful be ordinary? I try to find a context for words, for hair brushed behind my ear, for feelings that seems so distinct from the life I lead on Monday. I stop myself before my reality becomes too distorted.

Tomorrow, at my desk, I will think of other things, like the correct answer to polite questions, and what time I need to leave for a meeting. “How was your weekend?” Does anyone expect the truth, if truth seems outside of the mundane, and yet not cause for official celebration? Can we believe that time away can be magic, or that life still holds its wonder even now, beyond a paycheck, a house to clean, appointments, errands? Maybe bliss should not be only time off. Maybe I should yield to that warmth. Maybe there is a new context I never even considered, one where joy is not held separate and only available on weekends. Can I weave that joy into the everyday and still make sense of it? Will it disappear, or fade, or will it infuse the days with softness?

Or is this all an illusion, just the dance of two lonely souls?

“That night we moved closer to the border, and clear across the prairie, at the very edge of the horizon. We could make out the gas fires of the refinery at Missoula, while to the south we could see the lights of Cheyenne, a city bigger and grander than I’d ever seen.

I felt all kind of things looking at the lights of Cheyenne, but most important, I made up my mind to never again tag around with a hell-bent type, no matter how in love with him I was” (Sissy Spacek as Holly, in the movie Badlands, 1973).

I recently had a moment of fond reminiscence of dangerous days, the thrill and passion of grasping tight while the wind and the world hit me head-on. Then I woke up.

There are all sorts of reasons that taking off in pursuit of adventure may seem like a fine thing to do, but in the end, most of them seem to involve running away from, rather than to something. The vague idea of adventure was a dream I inherited, a place I guarded in the back of my mind as an option whenever I was faced with too much unhappiness in too short a time.

Until I was in my late 20s, I never did much more than ponder that option. A few times, I felt myself drawn to the flame, flittering perilously close to entanglements that would break my heart, and did—but not irretrievably so. I jumped a few times, but felt that elastic pull back, bungeeing me back into a predictable existence to idle on the lookout for my own truth.

I wonder sometimes if it is a part of growing up, or if it is a part of growing up unhappy that leads a person find truth in sublimation. Sometimes I find that truth in words, my own words, a world on a page, or in a heartbeat, a smile, a carefully placed step and a song, a moment of pure grace. This is a sort of joy.

Try as I might, though, I never found joy on the back of a motorcycle, holding on tight while someone else drove through the unknown vistas and back roads. I did venture once, untethered at last, straddled the back seat of an adventure and never went home again. But where I ended up after that, I expected to stay.

I guess I should have known this was not a ride meant for settling, for bonding, or for discovering ourselves. The never-ending voyages tugged, threatening roots that grew ever deeper. “Why leave? Why not stay and see the flowers, the fruits, this life we created?” I wondered. Garden with me.

“Come alongside me,” he said, and I followed, while I still could. The urge to flee returned tirelessly, a malignant tumor, seeking still more—but what?—some indefinable thing that could ravage me in the process. One day, farther from joy that I ever imagined, I stayed behind; he left. But he could come home, to walk among it, to reclaim this life, this beautiful, imperfect life that had grown, with the weeds and thorns to disparage. He could come home, if only to pick the best fruits from among them, to look at love and believe it would always wait.

I wonder, what hidden parts of ourselves only find expression in actions that seem to defy what life passes to us, even what we choose? I wonder what makes us feel more alive when we speed through space, feeling the vibrations through our skin, into our minds, testing the very limits of our physical life, and abandoning in those sublime moments all that has meaning here on Earth.

And then… what makes us feel justified to return, perhaps unscathed, perhaps damaged irreparably, always hoping to be cared for and loved by the ones we left behind…. or at least, not forgotten?

I wonder what the seeker seeks, if he even knows, or is it the search that he lives for, the never-ending journey? What comfort does the road bring? Perhaps it is the moving skylines, the exchangeable faces, the well-polished security of the new and unblemished. Perhaps the road brings an illusion of perfection, and the safety of never truly being known.

This morning, I picked up a pan from the oven with a wet oven mitt. That sensation took me back, back to my childhood in the wilds of Webster Groves.

When I was nine, my mom gave in to my begging and let me go for a ride. My half brother only came over when he felt like it by then—no longer every weekend. It was 1974, and as the generation seemed to dictate, he delighted in infuriating my dad with his choice of dress, friends, and things he put into his body. This time my half brother was wearing a fringed leather vest and headband, long hair, but brought no friends or pipes: only an extra helmet. I can hardly remember the motorcycle he had at the time, but we were adventurous as a family with our choice of things to drive, so my thought was that it was faster than our go-kart, and street legal—unlike the minibike he had before. I got on.

We went around the circle that was my street, and I wanted more, so we headed down the hill, down Edgar Road, and down Glendale. Wheeeeeee! It was so great, so free, so … oh my God… what happened?!!!

Lesson learned: Do not wear shorts on motorcycles. And if you do, do not rest your bare ankle on the exhaust pipe.

When the blisters healed, that scar was infinitely cooler than any tattoo could ever be: not-too-obvious proof of my reckless side. I may have seemed the goodie two-shoes, but was attracted to danger and dreams, and seeking the sublime in whatever form it presented itself–but not motorcycles now.

I cannot say it is always healthy to seek this kind of adventure. It certainly can cause discord in an otherwise upstanding life.

But hell it sure can be fun.

(Above is Richard Thompson, singing “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” a fitting song for my moods today. Wouldn’t you like to have him come play songs in your living room?)