Thoughts Of Mama, A Lost Love, And My Harley And Me
I relish this exercise in solitude. I ride alone mostly, sorting through my thoughts or else placing them on hold during my motorcycle riding indulgences, kissing time and memories.
By John W. Fountain
CHICAGO, Aug. 22—I STOOD LAST EVENING with Django, while smoking a sweet cigar and recording on my android the glowing egg yolk-colored sun sinking in the distance behind emerald trees.
Within a few moments, the sun sank, though its illumination still enough to provide the lingering light of dusk that hovered over the forest preserve prairie and soothed my soul.
I ride Django, my chrome glistening Harley Davidson cruiser, sometimes on summer evenings. The growl of my tailpipes and the whir of the August summer wind are a sedative for my mind and soul.
I relish this exercise in solitude. I ride alone mostly, sorting through my thoughts or else placing them on hold during my motorcycle riding indulgences, kissing time and memories.
I no longer ride as much as I used to. Honestly, I thought seriously last year about giving it up. When I have shared this internal conversation with some, and they have asked why, I have explained: “It’s so crazy out here now. People are nuts. They don’t respect motorcyclists.
“Sometimes the most enjoyable part of my ride is pulling back into my driveway.”
While all of these are true, that is not the whole truth.
Truth is, in a way, I have lost my joy. It was a joy that when I began riding 14 years ago fresh out of the Illinois Department of Transportation Cycle Rider Safety Training Program made me want to gear up and ride whether rain or shine.
It was a joy that kept me polishing my ride, spit-shining the chrome until I could see myself in it and the sun reflected on every visible centimeter of visible surface unencumbered by dust or smudge. It was the joy of riding free in the open air over the open highway without doors, a hood or seatbelt, nestled in a saddle as the engine groveled and I sometimes revved my throttle like I was Batman. Except I was Black Man.
I loved riding. Only occasionally with a brother or two. To the city. Through small-town America with a stop-off to gaze at a tranquil river or glistening lake. Riding was therapy. I sat on the couch. Without judgement, my bike listened. Soothed. Riding was medicinal.
I can’t say when I lost my joy. Or when, at least, it began to lose that loving feeling. Django is not my first ride. My first was Midnight. Also a shimmering black Harley, we shared miles and life and tears.
I used to ride Midnight to visit my mother at the south suburban nursing home, where she lived after her Alzheimer’s progressed, seizing more of her memory and necessitating 24-hour care. A life-long smoker, she had—weeks before arriving at the nursing home—also been diagnosed with lung cancer. She was dying. She had only months to live.
The good news, despite her prognosis, was that it meant we had a good sense of how much longer Mama might be with us. That we had no time to waste or spare. Time only to love and leave nothing unsaid between us.
I SPENT A LOT of time with Mama. Taking the meager 4.5 mile-ride on Midnight down my block to Western Avenue, down to Joe Orr Road and over to busy Halsted Street and down to the red-brick nursing home.
“Oh, I see you’re on your motorcycle,” Mama would say smiling sometimes on her most lucid days upon seeing me in my motorcycle boots and black-and-white bandanna tied around my head, and jeans.
Mama was always happy to see me. I was a mix of joy and sadness, though I always sought to reflect—for the sake of her well-being—the joy and gratitude I held for having the opportunity to be there for the woman who gave me life. The woman who, despite our poverty, sacrificed and made a way to send me and my siblings to private school. The mother who told me, when others said I was nothing, that I was something.
In as much as I loved to visit with Mama, to caress her forehead, to tell her how much I loved her and that she was always enough, or to pray for her or sing old Gospel songs until she drifted off to sleep, the ride home was mostly tearful—my Harley and the night air counselors for my pain.
On that day on August 21, 2014 that I visited Mama at the nursing home, I asked if she wanted to take a walk outside in the nursing home’s garden. She smiled and said, yes. I helped her into her wheelchair and we went downstairs, where I bought ice cream bars that we both devoured while sitting on a wooden bench in the garden.
We sat there mostly silent amid an absolutely gorgeous sunset. I snapped a few pictures with my android. Suddenly, Mama said she wanted to stand to her feet, which was difficult for her since her illness.
“You want me to help you, Mama?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I locked the wheelchair’s wheels, then bent down and told Mama to wrap her arms around my neck then lifted her. She stood, gazing at the sunset as I braced her, prepared to stand by her forever—at least until she said it was time.
A short while later, Mama said she was tired and wanted to sit back down. I obliged, and we lingered for a little while watching what my soul whispered to me then would be the last sunset Mama would ever see. The next day (Aug. 22, 2014) Mama died, hours before sunset. And nothing since then has been the same.
Exactly 10 years later from Mama’s last sunset, as I watched the setting sun, I had not planned it this way. I had no conscious thoughts of that final evening with Mama. Nor even the vaguest desire to commemorate that moment or memory.
But maybe the soul knows. And just maybe the evening August wind and Mama led me and my motorcycle here.
I love you, Mama and I miss you every day. …Until we meet again.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
Lovely.