How do you do it?

When I start writing, I never know exactly where it’s going to go.  I don’t know where my thoughts will take me or what pattern will arise from the sentences that flow from the pen.  The best motorcycle rides have also been like this.  No map, no plan, no expectations.  Just me and the bike and a decision at each intersection: right or left?  One night after a crazy day at work, Ashley and I went out for a ride around Grand Rapids.  We each lead for a time and then we decided to play a game.   We decided we’d ride past the first three roads and then go right.  Three more roads then turn left.  We wanted to know where we’d end up.  We wanted to see something new.  It was quite fun- deciding to be lead by the randomness.  Before long we were riding with silly grins and our laughter could be heard above our engines.  We ended up winding our way through neighborhoods across the city.  Eventually, rain won out and we eased our way back home.

The best time to ride is at night along the Grand River with lights from the city marking my path.  I wind through Downtown passing over one bridge after another- west on Fulton over the river far below then on to the 6^th street bridge and crossing east back over to Monroe.   The night air is cool and soft, with the rushing river water whooshing underfoot.  I like an early morning ride, too, commuting via the sweeping arcs of highway, tall buildings rising up around me, slipping between other vehicles, until I find my place amid the pack headed into work.   The best time to ride is with the first signs of Spring with the swallows swooping and swinging amid the treetops and my tires swishing though shallow pavement puddles.   Sometimes my favorite ride is on mid-summer mornings when mist rises off the fields while the dank and loamy air surrounds me.   I like riding through downtown on Wednesday nights when hundreds of bikes line the city streets and cruise through town in groups of three or five.  There is an energizing bustle to blues and bikers and brick streets.

Really, there isn’t a best ride or a best time to ride.  They’re all “don’t-miss-it” attractions.  The best ride is the one I’m on (or in the case of Michigan Winters, the one I’m thinking about being on.)  Riding is about the present moment- finding myself steeped in sights, sounds and smells so that somehow a moment stretches on into timelessness.  Those are the best moments.  Those moments, those rides are the “why” of my ride.   This is the one time I don’t mind answering why.

In the rest of my life, I shun this question.  I don’t like sitting amid the “why” when it’s asking things like: “why did this happen” or “why do you feel this way” or “why did it take you so long to figure that out” or “why does it matter?”  When I was in nursing school, I was taught to never ask “why” of a patient.  It breeds defensiveness.  It implies stupidity- as in “why did you do that?  What in the hell were you thinking?”

The same is true of my life when I am asked to explain myself to someone.  The question precedes a set of foundational beliefs that I don’t subscribe to.  “Why don’t you have a tv?” comes from the person who unwinds watching Bones or episodes of Glee.  “Why don’t you have a car?” comes from the person who can’t imagine how to get around without one.   “Why do you care so much?” comes from someone who is always saying, “I don’t really care.”  I don’t know how to answer the question why without also addressing the underlying presumption.   Sometimes I give a partial answer: tv was too much of a distraction for me.  Sometimes I answer my own pure truth: because I wanted a motorcycle more than a car.  Sometimes my retort is a bite:  how can you care about so little?

Asking “why” is a dangerous question.  It precludes a set of beliefs not shared by the one asking.  It assumes a shared reality that isn’t.  It distances us from one another.   The “why” I most hate to answer is “why do you feel that way?”  Feelings spring up out of some hidden musty place in response to all manner of things without reason or logic or thought.  To that question I can only say “because that is the feeling that arose.”  The work is in finding out what that response is rooted in, what fear or doubt or worry is anchored so firmly to it that it reaches my consciousness only when yanked on.   The second “why question” that I despise is “why did this happen?”

I hate this question because it assumes there was another thing that should have happened.  It assumes a wrong was done when right should have prevailed.  It assumes that good triumphs over evil and that good things happen to those who wait and that if only I’d been paying attention that other thing wouldn’t have happened.  I don’t know how to answer some of the most important ‘why’ questions of my life:  Why did I meet this particular person at this time in my life?  Why did this happen when I was a child?  Why did my dad die by the hand of a surgeon who was supposed to save him?  Why did I become a nurse only to struggle to find the right nursing job?

I don’t like being asked ‘why?’  I don’t like it at all.  I would rather imagine all the places I can go from here, all the ways I can answer the why, find all the ways to live through the ‘why’ despite the barriers in front of me.  Most often the answer really is something akin to “I don’t know but I’m going to keep marching ahead and see what happens anyway.”  And I want to march on with pride and self-respect and dignity.  I want to march on despite my tears while holding the hand of a friend.  I want to march on while laughing and skipping and snowboarding.  Why just isn’t the right question, but rather ‘how?’  How do I respond from here and where do I want to end up once I’ve lived my way through this?   Asking ‘why’ leaves me mired in doubt and insecurity while asking how is the bridge to tomorrow.  Asking ‘why’ keeps me stuck in what-ifs and how-comes and life’s-not-fair when what I really want to be living is what’s-next, when’s-the-train-leaving and who’s-up-for-a-ride?

This Christmas marks the 3^rd since my dad entered the hospital for his heart surgery.  I am amazed at how much life has changed for me in these three years.  Amazed that I’ve found a life that has some spark again.  Amazed that life has brought me back around to myself, to the full rounded measure of how-I-go- forward instead of the stark metallic clank of why?  My mom and sister and I will be joined by a friend for Christmas Eve dinner out at a local restaurant rather than eating a home cooked meal in.  We will walk amid the Christmas lights of Meijer Gardens.  There might be some tears and there will be stories.  We will talk of the life we thought we’d have and the life we find ourselves in.  We will laugh as we remember him and his quirky ways.  We will marvel at a life that still seems so filled with someone we can no longer hug or have dinner with.  But we will see his hands joining ours around the table when we speak of him, we will hear him laughing with us as we pretend a stumble walking through the park, just as he did.   Later, we will come home to watch a movie together, my mom, sister and I.   While Laurie loads up the movie, my dad and I will make popcorn together like when I was a kid.

He will stand beside me as I read the imaginary directions posted inside the cupboard door above the stove: ½ c. oil, ½ c. popcorn.   We will use the same Club aluminum pan he used- avocado green singed black over the years.  We’ll add the oil, turn on the heat and throw in one kernel. Once it pops we’ll add the remainder.  We will listen until the pops tumble over one another and then slowly peater off, shaking the pan over the flames, scraping the pot over the burner to keep the popped kernels from burning.  We will distribute the popcorn to the bowls waiting on the counter next to the stove then wipe out the pan with a wad of paper towel.  We’ll add ¼ stick of butter in thin slices to the pan – it will sizzle and snap, bubble and froth.  We’ll slowly pour it over the popcorn in each bowl and then add salt, keeping the shaker at eye level, carefully metering it out- not too much, not too little.  We will take the popcorn into the living room along with a Hershey bar from the fridge.  Then we will all watch a movie together.

We will have a beautiful Christmas.  Not quite like the one I’d thought we have but still together.  He will be with us, some how.  He is still with us.  I don’t really understand it, this ability to carry someone along when you need them.  I don’t understand all the memories that flood me sometimes while at other times he feels so elusive.  I don’t know why I talk about him so much to people who didn’t even know him.  I don’t know why I see him in so many places and in so many people- driving an extended cab truck, pounding a nail, scratching his head.  Some questions don’t have answers though and some questions shouldn’t be answered.  Sometimes there is just the steady plodding along that comes as we live and we love and we learn how.