fog

I got funny looks heading out this morning. Rain poured down, the sky glowered a deep grey, and there I was, wheeling my bike out for my commute. Turning on the lights and heading the hissing wheels out under thick, boiling skies, I wouldn't miss this for the world. Shreds of some low clouds finger the skyline, tasting each building. How sweet is sweet home, Chicago?

A cold wind brushes in from the lake - maybe a interloper from Canada- and soon I'm not just alone out here but awash in a chill cloud. The normal vista breaks down into the chunks which reveal themselves in the orb of each light. Here a lonely trail, here an empty beach, here water still as bathwater. The air is full of this cold water - a mystery.

Love and death - two of the biggest how-to mysteries known to humanity. I'd like to think that, having failed at one, I might well avoid the other. But as the roots in my hair grow I see the dots of silver growing from my head. "Who knows", I tell the mirror, "who knows... You might just fall in love yet."

Why I like Monday

In the silence of Monday morning I move through an abandoned world accompanied by just a few other hard-working ghost people. The lake shore is open and empty while the sand itself seems to heave sighs of relief. Evidence of two hot days of abuse - piles of broken bottles, soda cups, napkins and food wrappings, bags of junk left from cookouts - make mountains at her edges. The cyan light of morning opens its eye over Chicago to illuminate an exhausted relief. Thank god, the people are gone!

In the empty locker room I open a makeup case and my chosen weapons make clattering plastic sounds across the counter. In this antiseptic and air-conditioned world I erase the evidence of a weekend. Cover-up liquid will conceal dark circles under the eyes and some zits which grew from sweating out in the hot sun while working in the dirt. The little pot labeled "paint" will do the trick to hide the tiny purple dots which appeared all around my face when, disgusted with my own eating, I decided to purge up Saturday's dinner. The blood vessels that burst in my right eye during that process still leak brilliant red. It can't be fixed, so I change the part in my hair, snap the hairdryer out of the wall holster and re-style the coif. Now long bangs fall in front of the right side of my face and conceal the bloody evidence. I tell people I threw up because of heat exhaustion. I hide any traces leading to a different truth. I don't really care if there's anything wrong - any thing wrong with me or any injury. I only care that there be no appearance of my having slipped.

I open my blush compact carefully. The cake inside is shattered and sits in jagged, cracked piles that threaten to dump out of the container and make a mess at any second. It looks as broken up as I feel. I gently poke some color out with my brush and snap the little compact shut to hide the evidence within a smooth, black case.

I slip on the dress I toted along. It's a light, linen thing bought during a trip to Finland. That's the place to shop, for sure. For me, I have to go where all the women are built like linebackers to find clothing that won't yell "her shoulders are too big! Her legs are too stocky!" The more I bike to work the lighter the clothes I wear are becoming. Linen dress makes a neat line and as there's less on my hips to hold it up, it floats down below the knees. I review the evidence of yesterday's fast in the mirror. It made a good start in fighting back this disgusting mass of self. I step back to review the results of my efforts.

The weekend, with its terrifying stretches of unstructured time, is over. Back to Monday, I wake up extra early to the comfort of a schedule, times to work and times to eat, clear times to exercise and times to rest. Wrapped in paint and cloth, I'm ready.

Another dead drunk.

Dog darts out in front of me, thick black hair flying as he intently chases a truck heading down Lake Shore Drive. It's a hopeless pursuit for the pup. I look around but find no owner in sight. But dogs are sprinting animals and it darted in front of me with no notice and poor calculation. Only a quick squeeze of the breaks saved it.

Further down the line I negotiate the turns at Fullerton and start down the long, flat stretch by North Avenue beach. It's a golden morning and the lake is as calm as bathwater. Up ahead there's something on the trail, a truck of sorts. Getting closer I see it's an ambulance. While a woman holds her bicycle up for inspection another figure, strapped to a gurney, head and neck in supports, little running shoes poking out the end, is lifted into the back of the waiting vehicle of mercy. It could have been one of those chance encounters - a tiny mistake which normally falls well within the margin of forgivability. But this time the math didn't add up together so well. Tiny mistakes, miscalculations of motion or distance at exactly the moment when the jogger tries to move abruptly without looking. There's no malice. Just... bam.

Bam! "Hey Caroline, congratulations - a few days late. In other news our friend Mario - one of our class of '98 group - OD'ed on Monday. Went to the wake tonight and the funeral is tomorrow".

Mario... He wasn't just on the perimeter of people I got sober with. He was a force. He piled us into his beat up car to drive to & from commitments. He showed up at my house every Sunday for 3 months in that big crown vic & by the end I had a driver's license. Then, one day, a different light appeared in his eyes. Rather, it was a sudden lack of light. Wasn't anything alarming, at first. He started chasing tail, doing guy stuff. Soon enough he just didn't seem as interested in people. He didn't talk or engage in conversation but his eyes made furtive movements as if looking around for something not offered by current company.

Last year when I visited Boston I asked after him and was told that he was "out there". He'd relapsed into his old life. And now? Another body dead. Dead in the dumbest of ways. Perhaps that body had more sense than his mind and knew that the only way cease the chemical abuse was to simply STOP. He over dosed. Sought pleasure until it killed him. Maybe it was planned. Maybe he wanted off the roller coaster and deliberately...

I don't know. I just know that the glint of clever blue eyes and that grin on a dimpled face are gone. Gravelly bass voice, gone. Why him? Why not me? I've made my share of bad decisions in sobriety. I've gone off the deep end with 'problems other than alcohol'. Why him, not me?

Bam! It all seems such a roll of hypersensitive cosmic dice. Maybe not me because it's not me, with my failings, that keeps me clean after all. Today it adds up. Just for today...

under the see

Truly the unconditional love & romance I thought was outside me was never there. It was always hiding in the deep dark sea of myself. I have to be willing to dive, hold breath, hold on. Feel pressure and cold on the skin pushing me back to the surface. I don't belong on the surface of my own life. There's more life under the sea, in the deep.

mom-over

Let's call it a mom-over. I catch myself warning myself about every little hazard only to subsequently react and swing hard in the opposite direction. I ride my bike fast and reckless. I've figured out how to swing my hips and swerve the bike at tight angles. In my head I hear myself reply to her. As I see my day my thoughts reach out to her in conversation.

"This is what I meant..." "Don't you think..."

Some of these mental conversations are painful as her attitudes about women or black people present themselves. Then I remember, I'm not allowed to talk with people who aren't there.

And some day she won't be. There will be no jam. There will be no one seeing me to the Buffalo airport - no reason to even fly there. I hear, in my gut, what she meant when she said that my siblings would be all I'd have when she's gone.

And she will go. Maybe it's something about people in their 7th decade. She could trudge along for another 20 years like her grandmother. But I have to hide watering eyes as I hug her good bye. After security, after I turn and waive and see that lone, boney hand in the air, I strut toward the gate in high heels, eyes flowing with tears.

I may never see her again. Who knows. But that voice will always be in my head!