Memoirous

When tRump was elected I had so many sideways thoughts. One of which was: Now I’ll have to get on my bike and ride across the country. I immediately had this urge to go hide, runaway from life. The idea of dropping out was very appealing. I didn’t think I could handle the next 4 years. Mostly because I barely handled the other 4 years from 2016-2020. My world was upended by a divorce and pandemic. I did ride my bike across the country. Flashforward. Today is like reliving the past—except, I’m with family. The press of the everyday, ordinary life squeezes out the existential worry of “what if.” The baby is at a particularly tough age: always getting in to stuff, everything! Truly he would kill himself if we weren’t there to pull him off tables, small spaces he’d gotten into, pulling rocks and mulch out of his mouth. He’s old enough to walk and feed himself. He just lacks judgement, foresight, reason. Skills to keep him alive. The other grandson is learning patience, empathy, about h...

Cue the music, “Heat wave, havin’ a heat wave, tropical heat wave, certainly can-can.” I slept fitfully all night long as there was the heat, humidity, and some guy shooting off m80s. I was ready to leave at 7:30 . . . it just takes a while to pack up and get going. The roads into the the campground are sandy, silty and therefore catch my rear tire. I had to proceed cautiously. In Gregory I tilted back a cold tea that did wonders and I next stopped again 10 miles from home at a little church on the corner of country roads, Buckley and Holt. There I applied more anti-chafing cream and drank a full 22 oz of lemonade. This again helped. It was a great ride, ridiculously easy despite the temps being oppressive. My clothes were full of salt from sweat—when I got home I immediately showered and did laundry. I was invited to go to the beach and declined—happy to just be clean and in AC.

Ufff! I should have taken some ibuprofen before bed. I woke up achy. I’ve been spending evenings after work tilling the patch at the side of my Tiny House in preparation for a garden. 1) I’m not sure about how much space I’ll need, 2) I’m not sure when the big trees leaf out if there will be too much shade, 3) I don’t know anything. I do know that when I turned up the dirt there were lots of long, pink, healthy worms. A good sign. I’ve probably spent $100 dollars getting the ground ready. I bought seeds, soil, and some gardening tools. Some of these expenditures are one-offs. Now that I own them, but the soil and seeds are money in the ground. Luckily, some of the seeds have already sprouted indoors under lamps. The idea of gardening is not new to me. I’ve always wanted to have one—but in Chicago it simply didn’t make sense. Food was plentiful. (Though I would have loved a tomato that tasted like a tomato). Then in Oregon my roommate Jon tore up some thorny huckleberry bushes and...

I’ve had an amazing acceptance of a small flash memoir piece I’ve called Starting Over which will appear in the next issue of Random Sample Review for an issue themed “Follow Your Joy”—yes, it does involve a bicycle! More importantly, it was selected by a poet Debra Stone . This is significant in that my agent is reaching out to many small presses with my manuscript—a hybrid of memoir, historical criticism, and meditations that also involve bicycling. Here is Debra’s bio. Debra lives in Minnesota and attended Carleton College. She is co-founder and co-facilitator of the Northside Writers Group in North Minneapolis, a community-based writing group that has been meeting for ten years. Her poetry has been published by the Saint Paul Almanac, in the chapbook, “Bringing Gifts, Bringing News,” short stories published by Black Magnolia Literary Journal, Tidal Basin and is forthcoming in other literary journals. She has received residencies at New York Mills Arts Residency, The Anderson Ce...