Twenty perfect pictures
A cry-free four hour drive
Thrilled squeals that last for miles
A dip in the end-of-maze pool
A local restaurant in a sea
Of red jerseys and sauce
On the way to the stadium
With an ocean of red jerseys and lust
It’s summer and the sun has set
On fourteen flights of stairs up
The arch glistens from city lights
Alongside the river of all rivers
Our room sees it and smiles with pride
For we have won, we have won,
Our team, us, them, we have won.
temperature: 87
sunset: 8:30
ETA: 8:52
humidity: 70
miles: 5.2
mosquitoes: 1.1 million
times down the slide: 100
gulps of Gatorade: 50
cars waiting to pass: 10
songs on the iPod: 40
streetlights lighting up: 11
runners speeding past: 2
girls on a bike: 4
love: 100%
I have opened my wallet one too many times
but I just can’t help but pry it open once more.
it is for their eyes, sparkling and expectant,
and the polite smiles of the women who run
this little shop in this little town
that I will be leaving a little too soon.
with little brushes
little fingers
little hands
they paint.
an alligator as brightly decorated as a carousel horse
a miniature hat box with scribbled-out brown
a snake with dots and stripes and red eyes
they thank me
(all of them, the girls, the proprietors)
and the money,
it can’t capture their happiness,
so I’ll just tuck it here into this poem.
it isn’t enough to be ten feet from
the door of our tent to the shore of the lake,
to paddle out into the cove side by side
for a miniature version of a date
it isn’t enough to swim with three girls
in ring-around-the-rosy circles into the night,
the campfire’s afterglow and the Milky Way
lighting their way into the warmth of their beds.
it isn’t enough to stay for one summer
because it could never capture our midnight swim,
our skinny-dipped rekindling after a week’s absence,
the fact that we haven’t lived,
we have never lived,
until the deep-down,
sparkling starlit beauty
of this moment in Kentucky.
I am lost. It’s official, and something I am never proud to admit. But after thirteen years of driving across the country and visiting the tiny town of Rockford, Tennessee, I was sure I had its intricate map of five streets implanted in my brain. The store, the post office, the mill, the small neighborhood with all the dogs and no fences, the bridge over the Little River (yes, actually the name), the playground, the row of churches, even the small ranch house with a sign out front entitled, “City Hall.”
“Just like Gorham (the tiny town of my formative youth),” I’ve told my family a thousand times. “Nothing to it.”
I already called Bruce once, stopping around mile forty-two out of fifty, and he gave me a general guideline. Quite sure he told me I’d gone too far upon reaching Martin Mill Pike, I give in and turn there, sure it will lead me in the right direction.
It could have been I heard him wrong, but I have another motive that surpasses my initial motive of riding the bike from his sister’s house to his parents’ house. Out of the blue, emerging onto this beautiful, curving back road, I am suddenly surrounded by bicyclists with bibs pinned to their backs: “Rocky Top 100K.” I am trying to determine just how many miles 100K is (oh, us Americans!!), and thrilled at the same time. They are in a race, I tell myself, and I have already ridden fifty miles, the first hour in the dark, and they just started (I can tell—they’re barely sweaty) and I’m keeping right up with them!
So yes, when I see Martin Mill Pike, I can’t help but be guided by their diligent pursuit of a nicely sloped hill. Halfway up, a passel of them are stopped on the side of the road, all men of course, the only women here are tied to their spouses’ sides, helping one guy fix a flat. I take my opportunity.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for Rockford…?”
He speaks without a southern accent, and I can’t say I’m surprised by this, decked out head to toe in brightly colored nylon with click-in shoes and pockets in the back of his shirt, I just don’t think he’d quite fit in down at the cigarette store. “You’re in Rockford. Which part are you looking for?”
Wow. Which part? There are parts of Rockford? “Um… by Four Corners?” The name of the aforementioned one store.
“This road will take you right there. Just keep following it and it ends right at Four Corners.”
OK. So I do. Hop back on, pedal my way up, getting a little anxious (we are meeting someone later, and I promised Bruce this ride wouldn’t take longer than four hours. I’ve already surpassed that mark). I am surrounded by a dense forest, a curving road, beautiful tin-roofed houses tucked into the woods, going up, up, up… and proudly passing one racer after another. When we reach the top, groups of them cluster in gravel driveways to rest, drink. I grin right past and pedal my way down what I realize is more like a mountain (we are in the Smokies, after all) than a hill.
It has been about three or four miles (I’m kicking myself for not paying more attention), and all the bikers are turning. Now I’m truly confused. The guy said this road would take me right there, but I’m still surrounded by forests and fields, nothing but a giant church in sight (you don’t need a town to have a church here). This can’t be right. That Yankee doesn’t know Rockford.
So I follow the bicyclists, mixing in as if I’m in it to win it, but I give up after a while. Another guy stops too, not sure he’s on the right route.
“I think I’ve followed the 100K group. I’m only riding thirty miles today.”
“Do you happen to know where Rockford is?”
“No, but I have a GPS.” Of course, and no southern accent as well, I’ll point out. He pulls it out, types in what I think is their street address (have I mentioned how small Rockford is? When we mail things to our in-laws, we have to send it to a P.O. box. That’s how small it is!!), and sends me in the direction I’ve already been riding in.
Well… a couple of huge hills and miles later, I feel as if I’m going the wrong way. So I finally admit it. I’m lost, I’m going to have to call Bruce, and we’re definitely going to be late. He has to stop from his drive down, pull out his handy dandy iPad, and find me a route.
Turns out, I am about five miles from Rockford, but it is still Rockford. The first guy was right. I pass by Martin Mills Pike on my way to Four Corners, and later, when Bruce, the girls and I drive up the road, I realize how many more miles I would have had to ride to get into the center of town.
So… what have I learned from this day? One, I can ride sixty-five miles (albeit by default, I was trying for fifty), after a quick Google search (what did we ever do without the Internet?), I learn that 100K is equivalent to 62.3…. (yeah!), and Rockford, tiny, Podunk Rockford, is quite a bit larger than I ever thought. Just goes to show that you give a girl a bike, you learn something new every day.
after five and a half years of bodily sacrifice
i have taken a bite out of a different slice
strange it is to follow the pavement black
but this is the only way to get my body back
it’s not the baby belly (though it may seem)
but about my dignity, my self esteem
for them i gave scarred skin, life, milk
and now the road beckons with its silk
i follow it wherever my legs desire
as in high school when i was on fire
it saves me just as much as it did then
reminding me how to be myself again.
it is not for this view of farms
with old wooden barns
in the early mist of morning
that i rise early and ride
(though it could be)
it is not for the excitement
of a road I’ve never traveled
its twists and turns leading me
into a maze of forests and fields
(though it could be)
it is not for the muscles in
my legs that have tightened
into circular mounds of strength,
carrying me endlessly without pain
(though it could be)
it is for them, three souls lined up
to lead a life that they will choose,
and in my silent guidance they will see
that there are many roads, many paths,
that will lead each of them to happiness.
or, Kentucky Sun
Spring rains leveled the grass,
lifted up the trees, and blinded our way home.
Without the familiar echo
of thunder to mar the storm,
our pedals splashed the outpouring
of warm water into every pore.
Soaked as rats upon arrival,
we stood four in a row on the porch,
mesmerized by the suddenness
of the water that washed away
the intolerable heat that had
followed us all around town
for hours, days, weeks.
By the time we’d changed clothes,
the sun returned to center stage,
upstaging the clouds’ attempt
to rule this afternoon with the
persistence of a new Hollywood legend,
and once again warm water (sweat?)
poured out from every pore.
Isabella
While at first reluctant,
you have given in to riding
our connected bicycle,
stating quite simply, in your
I’m-seven-and-overheard-your-conversation
voice, “I want to spend time with you.”
Your keen observations along the route,
of roads previously untraveled,
family sightings, and hill monitoring,
only add to the noticeably stronger
pedal power that you offer.
We beat them home and you are as
proud as a new mother, displaying our
connected contraption with hands
outspread in a beauty queen pose,
our time together warranted by
your everlasting desire to win
(oh how I already know you
will always, always win).
Mythili
We are at the beach.
It may be fake (a river turned into a lake),
but you have managed to discover
seashells in perfect conical shapes
(the ones I searched for in vain at the
real beach when I was your age).
We haven’t even made it to the car
(as usual, your lunch lies abandoned
on the table, limp, unwanted)
and you have entered the imaginary
world that has followed you with penne pasta,
fingers, barrettes, sticks, even earrings
everywhere you go, creating characters
with each shell, telling stories with
frightened-fairy tale plots, holding
complex conversations from snippets
of adult talk that you have captured.
You are immune to the outside world,
to the goings on of swimming or interacting
with your sisters, and have given in to
the world where you imagine yourself to be.
Riona
Nothing can thrill you more than the simplest
pleasures (the tiniest pieces of the bigger picture
that we, emptying our wallets, want to offer you).
Here we stand in the intolerable heat
of a midsummer southern day, and I cannot
snap enough pictures of the grin that exudes
happiness in its purest, rawest form, lighting
up your entire face brighter than the glaring
sun that beats down its midday punishment.
In your hands is the infant rabbit, fur as soft
as the skin on your new cousin’s cheek, that
causes you to abandon interest in all other animals
(doves that coo, clucking chickens,
miniature goats begging for food, ponies
with lofty lips who placidly pick feed from puny palms).
The genuinely gentle creature you hold in your arms,
pulling its nose to your chin, clutching it as if
it is your own child, perfectly encompasses
all that it is (everything you are) that I love about you.
Once, when the first was born,
every small smile, every night
of endless crying, brought weepiness
to my eyes and yearning to my
new-mother heart, and I thought there’d
be a time (a time for me, for us without them)
when things would be easier.
Now (and every day since that first birth,
those first strenuous and anxious nights)
I know better. The new-mother yearning
transforms into seasoned-mother longing
and I wish I could snatch back those
moments that I once wished would end,
trap them inside these ever-harder moments
of sibling battles, school-aged woes, and
still-sad-to-see-them-grow goodbyes.
Once, when the first came into the world,
every moment led to a new surprise, a
new milestone, a delighted set of new
parents and grandparents. Now, when
everything is old hat and three lives have
filled our own lives with their love, I know
that things will never be easier, that
every small smile, every night of endless
worrying, leads to a new level of longing.
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