Mileage

 

Dedicated to Randy whose oboe has gently harmonized with the cello of my heart in our parallel lives.

 

Mileage

            “Car back” “Car left.” "Car passing."

            I cranked out some bicycle miles during my teaching career. I rode to and from school about three times a week. In addition I rode in group rides up to 100 miles per week. Most people thought I didn't have  a car. Once a lunch lady saw me drive into the parking lot. 

            “That's a really nice car you drive.” she pronounced, speaking about my Honda Element.

            “Thanks”, I said. “I've really enjoyed traveling in it.”

            “I didn't know you had a car and that's a really nice one, too.” she stammered quizzically.

            Another time a student thought she was “dissing” me when she said in front of her peers, “Ms.K'hed just needs to get another job so she can buy a car.” Ironically, my husband and I had 3 cars sitting in the driveway and neither of us drove more than 3 miles to get to work. 

            I rode a bike to the University about seven miles from home to earn my Masters degree. A coworker passed me one hot summer day. She stopped her car immediately and asked, “Can I give you a lift?” I waved her on and grinned. She pulled off the road ahead of me and rolled down her window. “If you ever need a ride, please call me so you won't have to ride on these busy streets.”  As she drove away I wondered where I'd put the bike inside her economy car had I accepted the ride.

            She, too, may have thought I didn't own a car. She was truly concerned about my well-being. She died about 2 years later of ovarian cancer. We were the same age. Ironically, I am still riding my bike on busy streets ten years after her death.

            Once, as I rushed to get to my University class to sit for a test, my book bag flew off my Canondale commuter bike. I was vaguely aware of the “thud”, but my concentration on “Car left, car passing, car crashing” allowed me to dismiss it as road noise. When I got to class I realized I was one bag short. I sped through the test. 

            “I've got to go retrieve my book bag." gesticulating in great panic to the professor. "It fell off my bike somewhere on DeKalb Avenue. I promise to be back in time for your lecture.”

            Sure enough at the intersection where I heard the “thud” I saw the contents of my backpack scattered out like trash. “Ahhhhhh”.

            I scanned the MARTA tracks, the potholes, and the fence where a couple of homeless guys stood. My red bookbag dangled like an ornament off a homeless guy's arm. I don't know how much “bling” I had at that moment, but I had “buck”. With all the ballsiness of any of my tough high school students, I rolled head on into the guy with my bookbag.

“That's mine. I want my bookbag.” I thundered.

He was stunned. A skinny white lady was rolling toward him with fierce cadence. He was going to hand over the bookbag or go down with the battle charge of the Cannondale.

Surprisingly, he capitulated as if I were a warrior twice his size

“I found it right here.” he said, pointing to the corner.

“Okay”, I negotiated with him. “I want the mini cassette recorder". It had my class notes, for god sake I couldn’t lose those. "And the baby wipes, and the bookbag. You can have the loose change and candy.”

Kissinger would have been proud. The guy handed over all I demanded, and I made it back to class as the last student turned in her test. I held up the red bookbag like a Heisman trophy. I received thunderous applause from my professor and classmates.

My bike computer told me my road mileage. I was curious?  How far was I walking during my busy days?  Why did my feet hurt so badly at the end of the day? I got a pedometer.

I had NO IDEA I was walking 6 miles every day at school.

The high school where I worked was located on a 100 year old campus.  It spanned two city blocks. I had students everywhere on that campus, and I roamed the campus chasing one emergency after another. The demands from other teachers, administrators, legislators and parents flew like a barrage of javelins around my feet.

“Mikeal needs class assignments delivered before 10:00 am.”

“Rasaun needs a pass to see the counselor.”

“Jamiah has to have her agenda so Mr. Collins will let her into class.”

“Tonya must be taken to the IEP meeting”

“Oseana needs to be escorted to In School Suspension before I kill her"

“Kasim's parents want to talk to you NOW.” I grimaced recallings all his parents no shows.

The walking, just like the demands, was endless.  It gave me a bird’s eye view of the school: used condoms, lover's quarrels, fist fights, secret cell phone conversations, and students asleep in back rooms. There was no end to the surprises I walked through. But just like the soles of my shoes, I was wearing down. One of my last days at the high school, I stood in the back of the classroom as the students watched a video. I slid my back down the wall into a squat. “Ahhh” It eased my aching back and feet, and kept me visible to the students and video.  The bell rang and we rose to walk out. The only difference was the students made it out, and I didn't. As I rose, I lost consciousness. When I came to, the classroom was empty and I was wobbling back and forth with coffee sloshed all over my blouse. My blood pressure tanked when I went from squatting to standing, just like my tolerance for the school system.

“Are you okay?” My husband asked as he walked past the bedroom. “Yea, I'm tired and cold.” He knelt down and put his hand on my shoulder.

“People don't come home and lie on the hardwood floor in front of a space heater with a coat on.”

“I know I am a pitiful site.” I moaned. He walked out with his usual quiet concern, as I slid my fingers across the floor just far enough to push the door shut so he wouldn't observe me in my hopeless state.

I was definitely running out of steam, but shutting the door didn't hide it any more. I couldn't muster the steam to do anything I didn't have to do. The same person who was nominated “Teacher of the Year” for long dedicated hours was toast. I left at the stroke of 3:30. 3:29 if I could. My creativity dried up. I had the winning formula for burn out. “Can't fix it and don't care.”

 

People go “Postal” for a reason. There's usually one event that cocks the trigger. For me the event was the deterioration of my daughter's health. She was 26 years old and complaining of rapid heart rate, fatigue and weight loss. I relied on my old friend Denial to cope with her struggles.

“She's probably got a heart murmur like myself and my mother.” I told myself.

“Mom”, she called in the middle of the night. I'm sorry to wake you up but Tina brought me back to the hospital an hour ago. They've decided to admit me.”

I scratched my head and watched my husband try to rouse himself.

“Is it your heart rate again?”

“Yeah, they want to see it slow down and run some tests.” as she cleared her throat nervously.

“Okay, I'll be there first thing in the morning.”

I can't believe I didn't rush to the hospital that moment, but I simply couldn't believe she was so terribly ill. The bright lights of reality flooded all of us when she was admitted several times in one year with elevated heart rates. Her blood pressure soared and tanked. This was no heart murmur. She was diagnosed with Graves disease, as well as, hyper/hypo thyroidism. She was losing her vision and wearing out her kidneys and heart. We were told she could go into thyroid storms, the hormonal avalanche of no return, at any moment.

General parenting strategies didn't work in this situation. Floods of emotion and fear took the reins of healthy boundaries. I reverted back to the runaway chariot of panic and desolate fear I had experienced when I was a single parent.

“I'm scheduled to have my thyroid removed Jan 5^th at Emory hospital.” Jena announced to me in front of her partner, Tina. A long paused ensued. I pushed my hair over my head and spat out,

“I don't like that day.”

“Why not?” she asked with an inquisitive look.

“It's the day my mother died at Emory hospital 30 years ago.”

“Ohhhh”, she replied. “I'm sorry. It's the only surgery date they have before February. I can't wait any longer. “

The surgery date WAS a problem for me, but the real problem was I didn't want my daughter to have her thyroid removed at age 26. I just knew she'd need that organ again before she left her corporeal body. I encouraged her to pursue alternative treatments. I even set up a bank account to pay for the uninsured expenses.

Truthfully, alternative treatments didn't work. She had gotten dangerously close to the thyroid storms. Her work didn't allow her the rest she needed. She relied on her job to provide the necessary medical insurance to continue with traditional medicine. It was the vicious cycle of ill health. Work for the insurance – illness – work – illness – work.. It's a sicken lifestyle.

When I caved in and emailed my family and friends of the surgery, I hoped those closest to me would recognize the date. No one mentioned it, but my brother, Randy, came to my door unannounced and hugged me and sat with me while I alternately cried and laughed hysterically. – the behavior of the marginally insane.

“It doesn’t make sense when your child faces death before the parent.”  One of said.

“Mike is building a house in Oak Hurst not far from you all.”  I randomly interjected.

“This is illness incomprehensibly painful.” he gently guided me back to the conversation.

His son had been treated for Acute Myeloma Leukemia just a few years before at Emory Hospital. Randy moved his family to Seattle, Washington so his son could receive bone marrow treatments at the place that had the greatest success. His son miraculously lived after nearly being tortured to death by the most aggressive cancer treatments they could offer a 24 year old. Randy understood my dance of marginal insanity.

Jena did have the surgery Jan. 5, 2010. My mother actually died on Jan. 7^th 1980. She had been comatose since Christmas day when my brother and sister and I got her to the hospital. Her body was bloated like a drown corpse. Tumors surfaced all over her like elephantiasis. She slowly left this earthly realm while I sat by her bed.

 Whenever I struggle with life, I always think back to that place and that day. It was dark, wet and cold outside. I was alone with mother. It was both desolate and inexplicably intimate.

I returned to that hospital wing many times after her death like a spy. I was looking for her. I was craving the intimacy and aliveness that lingers with death. The hospital seemed to be an empty hole. The visits did not comfort me, yet there I was 30 years later with my own daughter waiting to see if the diseased thyroid was cancerous. The irony couldn't have been more disturbing.

“We took a goiter the size of a grapefruit out of Jena's neck. We removed all of her thyroid, but we had to go in deep. Don't be surprised if the pathology report says she has cancer. She has all the markings of thyroid cancer.”

            These were the words of the exhausted surgeon spilling over the face of a horrified mother and Jena's faithful partner, Tina.

“Oh my god!  She looks like Frankenstein.”  I thought when she came out of surgery.  She had stitches that zipped from one side of her neck to the other. She was stone white. I could see what the surgeon meant when said he had to go deeper than he predicted. Her head looked like it had been severed and reattached. It was a mother's nightmare. And, just like 30 years earlier, it was wet, cold and desolate outside the 6^th floor of Emory hospital.

    “My daughter has been waiting for an hour for her pain medicine” I spat across the nurses' station. “Why hasn't it been given to her?” The adrenalin was surging in me like a raging river.

 “We have an emergency and the nurses have to collect the pills from a locked closet. We have to get doctor's approval before we go in the closet.”

            “Go to the closet and get the pills.” I demanded. “It's a pill, for God's sake.” I stood with my hands on my hips with feet apart ready to flip over the counter, if necessary. I continued to get excuses and no action. In the meantime, Jena signaled 10 fingers to describe her pain level, and I was standing in the shadows of my mother's miserable death.

            Tina saw me in action.  "Mama Bear has entered the building." I overheard as she reentered Jena's room.

I don't know if she was embarrassment or needed to take cover.

 

            In the thirty years since my mother's death, I had become a seasoned veteran of life – a challenging life.  Amazingly, I began to recognize the assertiveness I used with highly combative students show up in my personal life. I could fight back like a wolverine, and I wasn't going to watch my daughter suffer one unnecessary second.

    The doctor sitting behind the computer lifted his eyes and nodded the “go ahead” to the nurse to collect the pain killers. It took 3 trips to the medication closet to get the right prescription while Jena continued to shake all ten fingers signing her desperate plea. People scrambled around like the President, himself, were being treated.

            It was in the moments of Jena's recovery that I decided to leave teaching.  As I quietly did things like hem her pants and collect her pain meds, the tender lessons of thirty years before surfaced.  “Life is short and  love is the most important thing in my life.”  I considered the contrast between the quiet and the craziness. I had exhausted the miles of Georgia Performance Standards, Individual Education Plans, insane deadlines, and paper, paper, paper. There were no more miles left in me for school system.

            After my leave of absence for Jena’s surgery, I returned to my elementary teaching position in mid-January. I drug my ass in the doors and completed one of the most challenging years of my teaching career. Kid elopement, crushing deadlines, disingenuous parents and something new that had crept in over the years: caustic administrators. It was time for me to go.

            At the end of the year, these words came to me as I said “goodbye” to the staff and faculty.

            “I have pieced together 20 years of teaching special ed. I am a different person now than when I started. I have been fortunate enough to work with courageous people like you who are on the front lines of education. You are truly incredible people.”

            Their faces softened. I knew I was saying “goodbye” to all the stellar faculty, parents and students I had worked with over time.  It seemed as if time stopped for just a second and a match was lighted in the dark.

            “I recognize you. You're the bicycle lady of Decatur.”

             “What?” I stammered as I grabbed the chair arms. Images of the popuratzzi jumping out of a closet invaded my mind. I had ventured out to an employment agency to support me in my career change. I drove my car and wore a suit and heels. Had I become so notorious a rider that street clothes didn't disguise me any more?

            “I do ride my bike a lot.” I confessed.

            “Yes, I see you all over Decatur.”

            Riding a bicycle can make the rider feel a bit anonymous. It's an individual sport that requires attention and focus to small details like pine cones and debris or big things like tire wheels and predatory dogs. I always have a helmet on and layer of clothing to protect me from the sun and cold. These factors are insulators from the drivers in their closed up cars. They are the drivers. I am the rider. I never thought of myself as a local icon. The only satisfaction I could gain from her comment was she didn't call me “The bag lady of Decatur.”

            In his book The Color of Water, James McBride describes the embarrassment he felt watching his mother ride her bike around town. She rode for hours while the other moms were driving the muscle cars of the 60s and 70s. With their roaring V8 engines, they smoked past his mother tottering on 2 wheels. He recognized her obsession with cycling as a way to pedal off the grief of her two deceased husbands.

            I recognized myself in his mother. I had ridden a bike since I was 11 years old. I was much too young to ride the streets of Atlanta, but the long hours of isolation pedaling down narrow strips of the used up roads called my attention from other things: painful things like loss and despair. It also challenged my body to override the thoughts a decaying family, troublesome adolescence, etc. I don't know if I was wearing off grief or simply mastering strength with each stroke of the pedal, but I rode my bike all over the place.

            It was the height of the 10 speed cycling craze of the early 1970s. My older sister who hung out with cool teenagers, worked at a cycling shop that drew me in like a magnet. I could identify the models and corresponding componentry for each European bike that came through the door. I could differentiate a huffy from a Raleigh from 100 feet. I became a bike snob at a very young age. 

            There was an internal calm and elation I experienced from riding 10 miles to remote areas in search of an escape from the secret war in our home. Dad was jealous and mom was bludgeoned by his abusive accusations. Inside the war, they loved the 3 of us dearly. We all found our ways of coping, and one of mine was long stints of time alone pedaling one stroke after another. I focused on balance, gliding, shifting, muscle ignition and stamina. I also heard the birds, felt the sun or mist and experienced the seasons. I felt alive and exuberant; something that wasn't safe within a secret war.

            Early in the war, I signed up to be my mother's caretaker. As those who have endorsed such lofty contracts know this is a subtle, omnipotent, encompassing goal with poor results. I committed to feel every feeling she had. I was to be adorably cute as well as comfort every sadness she felt by succeeding in all areas of life, especially the ones she had failed. Phewwwww.

            I met these goals by wearing her beautifully sewn dresses, singing, dancing, going to church. That was the easy part of the contract. When I saw grief overload in her face, I hung around and offered compassion or to clean the kitchen. The real rub came when the war went nuclear.

            My parents separated in'74.“ As badly as it needed to happen it was like ripping the sinews of muscle away from the bone. When the decision was made, it seemed to take weeks for my dad to leave. My brother and sister had their lives dangling on the puppet strings of college. I was inescapably swept away in the landslide of a painful change.

            I decided it was time for me to ratchet up the commitment to my mother. If I caught her crying, I listened to her sadness. If she expressed anger, God forbid, I let it spit out of her mouth and blast the air while it seeped into my spongy brain. It ricocheted inside my skull for decades before I realized I was trying to protect and comfort her through every single, middle-aged and elderly woman I encountered, or the underdogs of the world. I couldn't leave the victims alone. I became the battle cry for every injustice of the world.

            Mother was plagued by migraine headaches. Her self-treatment was hiding in a dark room with a cold rag on her forehead and a chunk of ice to suck on. A bottle of Excedrin sat next to her. She had a headache at least once a month and it seemed like the end of the world's happiness every time.

            As kids, we couldn't deal with the heaviness and severity of her pain. I began to resent her illness and would sling her migraine first aid items into her dark cave, and then run off to the outside world that comforted me.

             Holidays were a constant trigger. How she ever cooked all those traditional Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter meals with impending migraines stalking her, I'll never know. The last six years of her life the meals ended and the headaches took over.

            After Dad left home, my brother, sister, cousin and I always planned a special day for her. She, too, bought and wrapped lots of gifts. The anticipation of one day of focused and elaborate joy were dashed by a headache and her inability to get out of bed.

            The Christmas before her cancer was especially hard. I was eighteen and capable of doing the shopping, cooking and orchestrating a special Christmas celebration. I desperately wanted to see her happy and cocooned from the pain of the divorce and loneliness. Clocks were synchronized and complicated schedules were organized for a bountiful Christmas celebration, but the migraine swallowed our happiness like a total eclipse of the sun.

            “Laura, would you get me some ice.”

            “Oh, NOOO.” My hand went to my head in agony. “A headache is brewing, but surely she will be well enough to get up and see all the things I've done and bought to make her happy.”

            As selfish as this sounds, I truly wanted/needed to see her happy. My happiness depended on it.

            “Mother, its Christmas.” pointing to the Christmas lights outside. “Randy and Karen and Tim are here. We're ready to have Christmas breakfast.”

            “Go ahead without me.” she whispered, “I'll come down when you open presents.”

The four of us ate enormous calories sadly aware of her absence and the presence of the headache.

            I made another trip upstairs. “Mother, we're ready to open presents.” I said without trying to sound like a whining plea.

            “Laura, I just can't get out of bed. I can't go downstairs.” Randy stood with me at the bedside.

            “Come on, Laura. Let's let her rest.”  Randy said.

            I felt crestfallen. I simply could not make mother well or happy, but this didn't keep me from trying. Like a hamster on an exercise wheel without a crash helmet, I would speed along rung-by-rung until I crashed underneath the spin of endless efforts.

            The four of us opened presents and joked with each other. It was an empty laughter which echoed impending doom and insatiable despair.

Standing in the hall of the 6^th floor of Emory Hospital, commanding help for my daughter was the last mile of my contractual tour for my mother. I no longer had the energy to save her life and make it fulfilling. I had completed the mileage that pedaled my long standing grief. I couldn't help enough people, make enough “A”s, break up enough fights or be successful enough to fulfill the contract I had made with her.

            She died at age 46 of breast cancer after a painful divorce. I couldn't fulfill the mother/daughter contract I had consciously written with my daughter either. I breached the unspoken promise each parent makes to ensure their child will have a healthy, happy life that will surpass my own. We remain cautiously optimistic about her future maybe as my brother does with his only son.

 

“Car left. Car right. Car passing.”

 

            I didn't go postal at my special education job; although I saw a lot of other people with the symbolic gun in their hands ready to shoot innocent victims or themselves. Instead, I quit.

            The obsessive cycling slowly left me too.  I couldn't live life with the same passion and drive. I couldn't keep up. Moments of terror would stomp into my brain like a hungry wolf targeting and viciously taking down its victim.  Each doubt was like a mortal bite into my tender flesh of my self-esteem. 

“How can I live my life if I don't achieve?" 

            "What will I do to make money?" 

            "How will I stay in shape?" 

            "Who will love me if I'm not the ME everyone has known me to be." 

            These are the penetrating thoughts of a person in transition and a grief in resolve.   But grief is a funny thing.  It changes with time – like an old, well-loved coat. The more tattered and discolored it becomes, the more embraced it is to the griever. My coat of many colors had become dreadfully beige. I had run out of thread to repair it. I couldn't hide its lifelessness. I couldn't go on with my life as if I were staging a performance of goodness. Instead, I just started looking at all the good. The gears shifted and I began pedaling in an easy moderate cadence letting my path direct me rather than hammering the road.  

            I spent a month in the little town in California where my mother grew up.  My aunt drove me around the beautiful country side and beaches retelling the story of my parents' courtship and other family lore.  I soaked up the "sunsets against the Sierra Nevada foothills and smell of the orange blossoms." Mother's favorite memories of California.

            Afterward, I started giving bicycle history tours. The stops and starts every mile were unfamiliar to a rider who was use to spinning through 50 miles in an afternoon, but the history was fascinating and made me hunger for more knowledge. The customer service I offered to the tourists was a balm to the hungry caregiver inside me.  

At the same time, I pulled out the contents of the memory box and let them lay askew on my office floor for months as I organized the misfiled journals, letters and a doll I starting making during my pregnancy with Jena.  I never finished it because she came early and squeezed into every second of my spare time.  I simultaneously, sewed the final stitches on the doll while I reread every journal entry and letter dating back beyond my 50 years.  Mother's love letters to my father had remained enshrined in that box since her death.  The stitches comforted me as the writings tore my soul apart.

            “Gently and tenderly, my mother came alive to me as I read a dream I recorded about a year after her death.  In the dream I lay stretched sideways over a bed at Randy's Florida house.   Mother sat next to me dressed in her black velvet house dress embroidered down the bodice and collar with tiny oriental flowers. Books and clothes lay scattered on the floor.  I sobbed inconsolably and asked,

   “Why did you leave me, Mother”?  She tilted her head and said, “I never left you.  I’m right here.” 

            The words were the opening to dimensions and realms I couldn't explain but understood without question.

    It was the message I had been pedaling away and toward for decades, and what I had come to understand about death.  She had been living closely to us gently touching our lives in ways she couldn’t have had she been on this plane with us. 

            The doll found a new home next to mother’s sewing machine and the journals were organized according to date.  Letters and awards were carefully bundled.  The first 2/3s of my life were drawn together like puzzle pieces easing into their perfect spots.  I could rest with this life as it is. I have accepted we are living on this plane, and death is not an ending but a transition to a plane that is closer than we imagine.

               The next year I started selling bicycles for a company that rewards enthusiasm and bicycle commuting to work.  I was in my element. It was hard not to regret the decades I had invested into teaching that often felt like a vice grip of crushing pressure.  

  “One, two, V.  This is the fitting formula for a safe bicycle helmet fit.” I demonstrated to the parent preparing her child for a test ride.  “Teach it to other people.  There are far too many helmets worn like Easter bonnets.  They won’t protect this precious frontal lobe.”  I said rubbing the child’s forehead.  I gladly served the children and parents as the other sales assistants pushed them my way.

            “These two bikes in the Cannondale series hit the sweet spot between performance and cost effectiveness.” I heard myself parrot like the bike snob of the '70s.

            There I was, a kid memorizing the components and NASA-like design of high-end bicycles.  I observed myself with amazement.   I was learning to teach people to cycle. What new personae had my unwinding grief taken on? Or had I finished unwinding the past and moved forward at a new pace. Cycling pulled together my desire for environmental friendliness, health and a slower life.

            "Taking the lane." and spinning into the last third of my life and tucking my grief into the pockets, hems, and seams of the old worn coat.   

   “The Bike Lady of Decatur” is in good company now.  The world has exploded with cyclists trying to ease pollution, save money and exercise.  I’m no longer surprised to see cycling commuters on the streets with me at 6:30 AM or 10 PM.  These days I hum along on an electric bike that compensates for my slowly shrinking muscles.

            “Hummmm” the electric motor is nearly silent so people can barely make sense of the speed in which they observe an middle age woman pedal. 

            “Laura, car passing.  I hear my riding buddies yell as we zoom through the Emory Campus. 

            “Wasn’t there a building there last week?”  a fellow cyclist pondered.

            “I wonder which building they’ll tear down next.”  mused another.

            “Emory sure keeps the contractors busy.”  I off-handedly added.

            We all chuckled and I pedaled past the hospital spinning into the third quarter or my life,  leaving all the dark memories behind.