The Obsession of a Good Heart - part 2

* * *

It was not until the morning I ran this year that I figured out just exactly why these biker men and women wave at each other. It's 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning. The sun is barely up, as is the rest of the city. But me, I'm out running my five mile loop. I'm going along, waking up with the day, just enjoying pushing myself farther and harder. Someone else is doing the same exact thing. We wave as we pass. We wave at each other because we share something. We share the ecstasy of running. I’ve spent years telling myself I am not my father, but when I waved, I am just like him when he is on his bike.

* * *

Obsession, determination, something pushes my Father in everything he does. After about a year I hated his Harley Davidson. I hated it like nothing I have ever hated in my life. I figured when he got the bike he would be happy, enjoy riding it, and he and my mother would be normal bikers. If normal bikers was not an oxymoron. My Father did not stop obsessing when he got the bike like I thought he would, but in fact, became even more determined to have the perfect bike. He was constantly changing it. A wide tire kit here, extra chrome there, a windshield, a new faceplate, new headlight kit, more chrome, saddlebags, fringe, even more chrome, a pipe kit. That’s a partial list. Through the years he kept adding to the bike, changing it so it didn’t even look like the original bike he bought. Or so he hinted at. I hardly noticed the changes; either I did not want too, or just all bikes pretty much look the same to me. My Father paid so much attention to that damned bike, it was his third child. I felt like it had replaced me.

Every once in a while I think about the wind in my hair when he would take me out on the bike but as I held my anger in about it, the rides got fewer. I never wanted to be near it. My Mom seemed to ignore the obsession with the bike and rode a lot with him. I noticed that it was bringing them together even. They both loved being out in the air and started to ride with other couples. I remember worrying every time they’d go out that they would come back safe. I hated that bike, but I never wanted anything to happen to it while they were on it. Maybe just for the garage to collapse while we were all inside eating popcorn and watching a nice, family movie.

* * *

When I get an idea in my head, I don’t let anything stop me. I may not have run for a month, but if I want to run five or seven miles on a Saturday morning I will do it whether I hurt or not. My Mom always told me I was determined. My Father joked I got his genes. When I ran that morning, I began to think he was right.

* * *

He has had that bike for eight or so years now. Even though it was top of the line, I don’t think it was brand new when he got it. But it was close. My Father lives and breathes Harley. He obsessives Harley. He doesn’t have a beer belly or a long gray beard and matching handle bar mustache. He’s never been to Sturgis or Daytona Bike Week. But he does have leathers, a plethora of Harley pins, forty-two Harley T-shirts, most from stores across the world he’s never been too, a “biker gang” he and my mother ride with, a plan to someday visit Sturgis and Daytona and to rode trip across America, and a heart. A determined heart.

* * *

I always said I never wanted anything to do with that bike after I looked at it as his third child but over the years I found myself buying him Harley T-shirts when I came across a store he’d never been too or maybe something small but with the Harley symbol on it. I even bought him a Harley Davidson Road Atlas last Christmas complete with legendary rides and markers for every Harley store in the Nation. I do all this because I realize I am my Father and I wouldn’t want to be like anyone else but him.

Some days I count my steps between cracks in the sidewalk. I count fingers of people in the room because I want to make sure they have all ten. I align everything perfect at my desk, or at the dinner table. I’m constantly straightening and I’m constantly counting. I’m a little obsessive. But when I make goals or set my mind to something, nothing stops me because I have the heart inside me to accomplish it. Just like my Dad.

I may be a runner and my Father may be a biker but we share something. Our sickly obsessive determination and passionate love for the one thing that keep us sane. His Harley is who he is. It isn’t his third child and it never was. It was something he found that he could enjoy; something he could relate to his family too. Something we could all laugh at together, ride together, even model our family picture after while we all simultaneously wore a Harley shirt. Harley is my family. My dad could bring me home a T-shirt from some Harley store, or buy me a cap while we were on vacation in Florida and stopped at every Harley store we passed on the drive down, during the week, and the drive home. But when he did that, I knew he wanted to share his passion with me. He wanted to tell me he loved me.

Adolescence made me see things a little differently and my resentment made me miss out on some really fun summer days we could have spent riding. But I know now why my father waves every time at a biker, and why it's a universal gesture across the world. It's because we're all a part of something, we’re all passionate about something. Whether biking or running, we acknowledge and encourage each other through a small gesture. We share our passions.

My Dad and I are passionate beings and I have his soul in me. I cannot wait for my future husband to have a motorcycle, knowing my dad it will have to be a Harley, so we can ride alongside my parents. He always joked with me about getting my own motorcycle license but I’ve never found the time to do it. I will one day, possibly in my midlife like him. My brother did, and even though he has a sport bike he still rides with the gang. Maybe when I have my first baby girl, I’ll name her Harley, because when I think about it, it’s no obsession with a motorcycle. Harley is my Dad passionate about his life, having fun, and loving. In all of his glory, living the way he knows how.

The Obsession of a Good Heart - part 1

The Obsession of a Good Heart

I am running. I feel the slam of my feet on the concrete, the hard, aged ground my enemy as it reverberates back up through my leg: left foot pounds, sidewalk hammering right back. Left hip sensing the shock, but right foot pounds anyway. I know the sidewalk will hammer right back again as my right hip braces for that shock, the joint grinding, circling around in the socket. My feet pace the concrete one…two…three…one…two…three, but it feels more to the rhythm of a song: Oh… what… a… beau…ti…ful… morn…ing…, ,oh… what… a… beau…ti…ful… day. I feel the pace start to fall into itself as the first light breaks through the trees; my leg rotates through my hip joint like a well oiled machine, even through the pain. The whole body aware now of the pounding of the pavement as it fights back, but running on. I don’t feel the pace anymore, the counting stopped some odd steps back, and my breathing is just a current, a natural air flow. I lose the pace because I just run. It’s automatic.

Halfway down the boulevard I see another runner coming my direction. Nonchalantly I move over to the right side of the bike lane so he can pass on my left. Note: get some brighter running shirts, especially with all this early morning running. I notice the bright fluorescent green shirt he is representing this morning and the dark gray I’m wearing. It just screams to the sparse traffic “moving target, open for practice.” As he gets footsteps closer, like me, I see the foolish grin on his face. It’s the breath of an awakening morning on a runner’s face that can’t help but produce a smile as each step racks up more distance. I hear his random thoughts mimicking mine: I am a damn fool to be out this early on a Saturday morning. Kids aren’t even awake yet. Are there cartoons on anymore? Did I turn the coffee pot off? Hell, focus. This run just feels good. I figured like me his mind was racing all over the place trying not to think about his pace, or count his steps or breath. Then it is out of the corner of my eye I notice, as he is passing, his left hand, mid-swing, as it reaches the peak out in front of him, gloved in UnderArmour, jerks out. It is a small gesture. A wave. And a friendly one, which I only understand by the smile and half nod he gives me as he follows through on his steps past me. I jerk my hand out too, as a response, but by that time he has already run another half mile up the road. Idiot, you could’ve at least acknowledged him.

I continue on my run and as I round the boulevard, through stoplights, and watching the neighborhood wake up, I find green shirt guy and myself are not the only fools out running this morning. I pass a middle aged couple, pacing slightly slower than myself. Two men, trying not to outdo each other; working hard to stay at the same pace. I can tell the one on the right, in the bright blue fleece is a natural athlete; he is one step ahead but is trying to hold back. Ten minutes later I pass a woman, about six or seven years older then me, enjoying every moment of her run. That’s what I want with my running, not to dread it, but to enjoy it, even down the road. It becomes clear to me after I pass her that with every runner I have come across, their left hands did the little jerk motion. The wave. But so did mine.

It was as if after green shirt guy, I had an epiphany about running. As I came closer to each runner, I watched how their pace was, their form, and how they interacted with their partner. Then, I concentrated on how they’d react to me. It was always that wave, at the same exact moment when we all pasesd. That little wave wasn’t just two fools acknowledging each other in the early morning, but instead, two runners connecting and sharing the ecstasy of running itself. One thought came to my mind: Oh Lord, I am my father.

* * *

It’s a delicate unraveling this fact that I am like my father. Or somehow understand my father. For several years of my young adulthood I’ve wrestled with the fact that I am not like him, but I am. I am him.

My Father rides a motorcycle, but not just any motorcycle, a Harley Davidson. If I ever said it was just a motorcycle I have a feeling the big guy on a Harley in the sky would smite me with his backfire. With that bike my Father is the top of the line, true rider. He at his ripe old age of forty-five is a biker. Maybe not a Hell’s Angel, but a biker nonetheless. He first got a motorcycle when I was younger, I cannot remember how young, but old enough to know. To understand what this was bringing.

See, he is an amazing man; he is determined or a little Obsessive Compulsive or possibly some of both. When he gets ideas or goals, nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing stops him and everything is constantly about that idea. It is all he thinks about, all he talks about, all he researches until he attains it. Previous to the Harley I lived through a year or two of “boat talk.” Every conversation somehow had the dropped hint of us getting a boat. Why life would be better with a boat, why we needed a boat, the cheapest yet nicest boats he could find in the weekly trader. Needless to say in his midlife that boat idea, boat obsession, turned into a motorcycle. His first bike in fact was not a Harley but that only lasted a year; he traded it in for the king of all bikes, a burgundy, year 2000 Harley Davidson Fat Boy.

When he first got it, it took a couple of months before I could go on rides with him; he wanted to make sure he had the hang of it, before putting our lives on the line. It was a pretty big bike. After a couple of months my father and I headed out on the open road, the highway, Route 45 that passes right outside my small town of Tuscola, Illinois. We had corn fields on either side of us. It really was the open road. When we were out there for the first time, I noticed that when my father passed another biker going in the opposite direction, he would stick out his left hand in a half wave and kind of nod. At first I thought he was just being nice; waving and all. But then, it kept happening. Every time we would pass a biker he'd wave again, and they would wave back. I thought maybe it was just the nice thing to do so I stuck out my left hand, half waved, and nodded as well. I wanted to feel like a part of his bike obsession.

As I got older and got my own license, I realized it was not just my father. I would be out driving my car and watch two motorcycles pass each other. It did not matter if they were cruisers or sports bikes, they would still wave at each other. I thought maybe it was just because they all rode bikes, a little secret motion or something. Like a biker club thing.

To simply love

It's just been this past month or so that I've found my self Valentine's Day so much. Yeah, it's commercialized, it's overdone, it's expensive, and well, I've never had a good one. But when I think about all that, I'm not really seeing it for what it is. It's a National Holiday to LOVE. I mean, what other day is devoted to telling someone, you're significant other, your family, your friends that you LOVE them.?Not a birthday, not an anniversary, just a holiday all about love. Yeah, sometimes it's cheesy and overdone with the bright pink singing teddy bear, or the heart shaped box of chocolates, or the gold dipped rose that will eternally last, but really, when you get down to the heart of it, Valentine's Day is just to love.

When I looked up love on Bible Gateway there are 69 topical references, 31 instances, and that's not including the million verses associated with each one. Christ tells us that the greatest commandment is to Love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind and to Love our neighbor (Mark 12: 29-31). Love comes from God (1 John 4:7), is patient and kind and not boastful and not proud and not rude and not self-seeking and not easily angered and keeps no records of wrong and does not delight in evil and rejoices in the truth and always protects and always perseveres and always trusts and alway hopes and NEVER fails. Love is the greater than faith and hope (1 Corinthians 13). And my favorite, LOVE is stronger than death (Song Of Soloman 8:6). How can I hate Valentine's Day when it's simply a day to love and love is all these things?

All commercialized things thrown aside, God ordained this one day, one day a year, when we can express how much we love those people in our lives; and maybe even show love to someone we don't know. Valentine's Day has a lot of preparation for some people, they make it a week long, a month long thing. It makes me think about how much love goes into one day. Why on earth would I want to miss that? A simple chance to love. A chance to smile at all my cheesy love movies. A chance to be romantic, to not care if someone sees me kiss my lover. A chance to be moved by the love around me. A chance to express how I feel and a day dedicated only to that. Only to Love.

Love is a beautiful entity. A creation from the perfect artist, a gift from the ultimate lover. If we all loved, just simply loved, how beautiful this world would be.

I think I'm actually falling in love with February...
Maybe I'll even by some red balloons.

a simple night

i have good friends.


great friends.

i think i've done more this weekend so far then i've done in any other semester. and you know, i have friends over and it gets late and they make fun of me because i go to bed early and i hate kicking them out to do so, but they never seem to get upset by it. they just know. i go to bed to i can talk to my fiance and they never get angry because i don't want to hang out later.

God has blessed me with some great friends. i really love you guys and i love hanging out. no matter what we're doing. life is more fun with you.


this time though, i really am going to bed for me. my headache is back and my vision is spinning. probably not good.

muah!

Movie Preview

In my night off, I found myself perusing online upcoming movies as I have been lately.
And, I think I have found one I have been waiting to see for a long time. Stop Loss

Stop-loss, in the United States military, is the involuntary extension of a service member's enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond the normal end term of service (ETS) or the ceasing of a permanent change of station (PCS) move for a member still in military service.

It's about the Iraq war, and a soldier's contract being extended after he comes home from a deployment. I think the Iraq war part will hit home, especially since Wayne has been over there. It's an Army movie and he's not Army, but still... the whole emotion is there.
It's coming out March 28th and I'm counting down.

Month's End

Like my usual morning routine, I was watching the Today show this morning and line spoken caught my ear. January 31st, the last day of January. This month, the first of 2008, is already coming to an end. I'm young, but life is moving fast.
January 31st. Hmmm. How many of my resolutions have I already slacked on? How big of a routine am I in already with life, and have I done anything to spark it up? Well... I'm writing everyday. Maybe not always in here, but I am writing. That's a first. Yoga... eh, it's coming a long. I think it'll take me years to become good at it. And running. Yes, I have found that again;, however it is inside some (blast this polar weather) but I'm still running.

I don't have much to say this morning (I'm tired again) but I'm just reflective. Life moves whether we move or not. Before we know it, it'll move past us. It's hard to believe that January 31st is here, but let's go with it. Do something different or crazy today. Don't schedule it, just do it.

Insomnia

I can't sleep.

It's 1 am. The Strange wind is howling outside my window. My stove makes odd whining noises. And no matter how long I lay in my bed with my eyes closed and the covers wrapped around me, I can't get my neck comfortable on the pillow and I have random song lyrics running through my head.

It's going to be an early morning. And I have an interview.

I wish I could sleep.

Substitute Runner

Occasionally I have to remind myself that I'm a runner. Today feels like one of those mornings.
Winter is dead; when I step outside no matter how many layers I'm wearing, the cold immediately sinks to my bones and I feel like I'm a frozen mess. I want the ocean and the sun, even if it is a little breezy. Needless to say, I haven't set one running foot outside in the past two months. I think Winter is killing my soul.

I'm down from running 6 days a week, to maybe 4, and those are on the treadmill at a very low mileage. Which makes it worse. Half the time I'm at the gym I don't even run because the treadmill is just plain evil; I do other cardio but it just isn't fulfilling. It's so substituting to a real run. Instead, I wear my old race shirts some days, and pretend like I'm the runner I was before Winter hit.

I know I'm a runner, it's just when I can't run, I feel like a part of me is missing. My soul feels dismembered. If I was brave enough I'd layer up and run outside, but I can't get past the bitterness that freezes my muscles. That's when I feel like I'm not the runner, when all the courage I have normally out there pacing, is gone because of a little obstacle.

Life is like that sometimes... substituting. Everybody goes through phases and hard times, and the person we really are gets put to the side and a substitute comes in to deal with whatever is happening. Sometimes we put on a fake smile, pretend to be happy, or just don't talk about things and try to figure it out ourself. We let this substitute person walk through the day and figure out everything. Our mind is hazy because it isn't really us thinking. When really the whole time, our real self is still inside.

I'll admit, until it warms up some, I still can't set foot outside for my normal morning run. It's just too cold, not hard, just cold. I'll continue to face the treadmill until spring hits, but I'm not going to be the substitute runner. I AM a runner, whether it's outside or inside. The hard has hit, so I just have to hit back harder. Pull out the runner who hunkers down and hides because I have to face a little obstacle. As a runner, I have courage, a destiny, to run. Why let the substitute have all the fun?

Predictable as a Sunrise and a Cup of Coffee

Grande White Chocolate Mocha with a shot of peppermint. Skim milk. No whip. On some occasions when I feel like a cup of coffee after noon, add decaf to my order. Predictably. I can walk into any Starbucks coffee shop and not even have to think about what I want to drink. I just order it with the thought that every ingredient is always going to be there; I don’t ever have to worry about getting something different, or risking a cup that I can’t stand because it isn’t sweet enough. Every time I drink this coffee, I open the lid, breathe in the sweet aroma, and watch the foam swirl; suddenly I am lost in a memory. Somehow one small cup of coffee rouses up one moment in my life with such clarity that I’m in that place once again. I take a sip of my coffee and I think back to one moment, a small coffee shop inside an airport bustling with people, only a few months ago that still today makes me wake up to the chalky sunrise, and take a step without any predictability.

We sat in a coffee shop at the Jacksonville airport, me with my signature drink and him with a regular mocha. Goodbye was coming soon. I cannot remember the age in which I learned to say goodbye, but I do remember my mother telling me to “wave goodbye” like it was a happy thing. Here I am this cute, baby blonde girl with tiny blue eyes that see the world as my playground, barely toddling along, squeezing my tiny fingers into my palm waving goodbye to my family as if it is just something to shrug off. They’d laugh and think it was so adorable. Next thing I knew, I’m sitting in an airport coffee shop, twenty-one years old saying goodbye to my Marine fiancé, now knowing the world wasn’t my playground, and not really knowing if I’d see his face again in a year. When I was that baby blonde, a minute or two seemed like an eternity away from someone, and now, a year might as well make or break my life. Sitting in that coffee shop I wasn’t that tiny toddler and this goodbye wasn’t adorable. It was huge and impending and left too much unpredictability hanging in the air.
Goodbye is one of the hardest words in the English language. It seems that no matter how many times you say it or in what situation, a bye is never good. I saw a picture that weekend of a couple standing in a train station, kissing. The engine behind them was steaming, ready to depart, and the couple themselves were standing under a clock. It was almost as if time itself was counting down each passing second until they had to go their separate way. I remember sitting there at the airport at a table perfect for two, our arms stretched across the surface and fingers entwined. I couldn’t watch him because I knew the tears would fall.
I let the wonderful fact that I was in an airport full of people keep myself from crying and watched everyone else around me. I saw families waiting with friends or loved ones who were departing; couples saying goodbye to their lovers; kids running around their moms and dads hugging Grandma and Granddad goodbye. I saw so many people embracing and thought to myself how a hug is the last feeling I will have of him before we turn away and say goodbye; something which would have to last me eight or nine months. Maybe a year. I watched the security line grow as more people prepared to leave and knew my time was growing in itself. I thought of the couple from the picture and realized the airport was my train station, the security line was my clock; both counting down until that one fated goodbye. I turned back to look at Wayne and upon seeing his face, knew it was time to go.

The way we had been sitting at the table, the gate exit was located right behind him and I had the chance to glimpse a few people welcoming those whom they were waiting for. It was beautiful to watch the lingering moments before someone arrived. I watched a girl in her young twenties; short brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and wearing an orange sundress suddenly break into a smile which spread across her entire face when he was still yards away in the hall. I saw them as lovers embrace with a passion of moments gone bye, and caress each other’s face. He pulled back from the hug, looked into her eyes, and kissed her. Kissed her as if he had waited his whole life to kiss her. To have gone through such an era of time alone and now here they were, in living flesh, in each others’ arms. I watched a myriad of tears fall down her face, but every single one was a capture of the new moments to come for them. I swear I heard a movie soundtrack score in the background, music rising to its climax as their lips touched. This young couple weren’t the only ones being reunited, but I had found part of myself in this girl, and I realized that though I was saying goodbye to my own love, this embrace they shared would be something I had to look forward too. A goodbye, though predictable from the time I met Wayne, was only bringing a chance at one more hello in our life.

He left me at the security gate that night as he always does. After one last embrace he turned and said goodbye. That’s all I’d have of him: the feel of his arms wrapped around my middle, the scent of his cologne on my collar, the small but immensely passionate kiss on my forehead.. For one chance or another that night I stood and watched him walk away. Watched him turn his back on me, walk through the crowd of people, pass the doorways, and out into the city. Watching someone walk away from you really gives the goodbye an opportunity to sink in. I felt a few tears escape my eyelids. But it also let me believe there would be another day when he walked towards me.
There was. Seven months later I stood at Ft. Stewart with a million different emotions in me, waiting for his bus to pull up after a very long and tedious deployment to Iraq. While he was gone it had felt as if we were living a year apart, but now we were in the same time and place again. I’d been on base for over three hours and finally the news came that his platoon was pulling through the gates. I felt like the little baby blond again. The world was my playground and I was waiting for my best friend to join me in a new adventure. As I anxiously tried to stay still waiting for him, I realized this was a moment in which I got to say hello. Not goodbye but hello. It was the same hello I had waited for since I had watched him walk away from me.
Seeing him get off the bus after seven months of eternity threw every goodbye out of my system. It gave me a reason to breathe again. It gave me a chance for another goodbye another day, but I knew I would embrace that. Each new sunrise brings goodbyes of some kind, but we cannot let life pass us just because of one goodbye. We cannot let time tick us into sadness but instead we should be thinking about what the goodbye is bringing. One more hello. One more chance to say I love you, one more chance to live a memory, one new embrace. One more chance to take a step forward and see what the world is bringing us.
Next time I find a seat in an airport coffee shop, I’ll swirl my white chocolate peppermint mocha, skim milk, no whip, and smile at the predictably of one more goodbye. Because one day, I won’t ever have to say goodbye again. Life can be predictable sometimes, but each chalky sunrise I wake up too, I know he’s back home waking up to that same morning.

Oh the places I can go...

So, my last post was a little ridiculous. I know. I was in a mood, tired, bored, frustrated, but that's life sometimes.

I am in a dilemma. And I just want to first admit, that though my posts on here have been few and far between lately, my writing has increased. My New Year's resolution for this year was to write everyday, either in my journal or on here... and so far, I've made it into the journal everyday. And it hasn't been just little short sentences of writing, but some poems, some novel ideas, some actual journaling. It just seems easier to write there during the day since I don't always have my computer with me. BUT, I am seriously going to give this blogging thing another try. I quite enjoy it, even though I think I only have about three readers, all of which I know. (Love you guys!)
Back to my dilemma. I'm in a writing workshop again this semester. (And I love it even though I've only had one class and it's only a one day a week class.) It's Creative Nonfiction, something completely new to me. Turns out I have my first creative essay due on Tuesday and I have NO IDEA what to write about. I mean, the options are so hard. I can write about ANYTHING I absolutely want too. It has to be truth, but creatively. You don't tell a writer to write about whatever they want for a graded essay, you just don't. But... it's kind of an adventure. I get to sit down and just type, write about something in my life and make is something worth reading. So, my mind has been going since Tuesday and will continue to go until I sit down this weekend to write. I'm hoping to post it on here.
Time for a new go around with my writing. I think I'm going to like this.

Now, it's off to bed. Quite early for me but I'm exhausted.
Enjoy life my audience and never, never miss out on the beauty. It might be your bestseller one day.