the mojo bag (part 2)

Deborah closes her eyes and nods. She rises and glides to a shelf, where she begins selecting from an assortment of crystals, stones, and trinkets. Peter takes her seat and looks at me, a little blearily but earnest.

“I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was a teenager. And when I got my first motorcycle after Deborah and I started dating, she made me a mojo bag — like a good-luck charm, to keep me safe. So I carried it in my motorcycle jacket.”  

Deborah, satisfied with her selections, comes back to the table. She lays out a cloth.

“And then, one day, I got rear-ended, by a car. I was stopped in traffic, felt the impact. I had enough time in my head to say ‘Oh fuck’ before the lights went out.”

“Oh my god!”

He looked at me intently. “And I got up and walked away.”

“You physically got up and walked away?”

He nods. “After I regained consciousness, the EMTs untangled me from my motorcycle and we walked to the ambulance. I had no injuries.”

On the cloth, Deborah has laid out a small figurine, a folded piece of paper, and three stones: cloudy purple, brown striped, inky black. She’s gripping a crystal the size of a bar of soap and the color of glass, and uses it to draw fast, tight circles around the cloth. Every so often, she flicks whatever she’s gathering off to the side with a grimace of distaste.  

“Peter, that’s incredible!”

“At the emergency room, the doctor goes, ‘You’re really lucky.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I get that.’ He goes, ‘No. 1% of the people that get rear-ended on a motorcycle walk away.”

I am silent.

“It was a miracle.”

Deborah squints, searching overhead. She’s has changed her grasp on the crystal, and now she’s tracing an ellipse, skimming the air for some nameless, invisible particles, and splashing them down onto the assortment of stones. When she is satisfied, she places them one by one into a small black velvet bag and hands it to me.

“Can I look inside?”

“Yes, of course. The purple is amethyst. It moderates your energy, and repels things that are negative. But it transmutes that energy, and sends it back into the universe in a positive way… And that’s black tourmaline. It creates a forcefield of protection. It’s my go-to, because for me it’s the strongest of the protection stones. The brown one is a tiger eye, for focus and balance. But it also has protective properties as well. And that’s—”

“— Ganesh!”

“Yes, the road opener. He clears away the obstacles.”

I unfold the paper. On one side is an illustration of a monk with a ring of curly blonde hair cradling a child in one arm and holding a lily in his free hand. On the other side, a prayer addressed to St. Anthony, Saint of Miracles.

“Anthony of Padua,” Deborah says. “He helps you find lost objects, but you lose your way, he’ll guide you.”

“Assure me that I am not alone,” I read. “And teach me to be humbly thankful as you were for all the bountiful blessings I am to receive.” I replace the charms into the bag and say, simply, “Wow.”

“Keep it on your person at all times, and it will protect you from harm.”

“That’s right,” Peter declares.

“Oh, and you can recharge it in the light of the full moon.” Deborah says this in the same by-the-way tone as when she told me where I could find the bath towels.

In moments like this, “thank you” is a meaningless utterance. Just two empty, oafish syllables. But they will have to do.

“You’re welcome,” Peter says, and then adds with emphasis. “Be safe. You’ve got people who love you looking out for you…” He gestures above.

 From up on a cloud, Uncle Rich tips his pipe with a smile, and Uncle Dean raises his root beer and says, “Be safe, baby!” Gummi, perhaps wielding a turkey leg, adds, “Gawddamn right you better be safe… or I’ll give you the business end of this drumstick!”

the mojo bag (part 1)

Peter’s eyes are faraway and misty. He sips red wine and drifts absently around the room, like a balloon in the current of an oscillating fan. Deborah and I sit at the table, talking intently about the occult: ghosts, tarot, auras, energy. When I mention that I found a turkey feather earlier that day, she says with authority, “That’s auspicious.”  

It’s not every day you meet a real-live psychic, let alone one who buys you pizza and gives you a place to stay!  

Deborah’s hair spills over her shoulders in whorls and corkscrews as intricate as a fingerprint, and behind her black-rimmed glasses, her eyes are bottomless as hot diner coffee. She exudes a powerful energy, like the rush of wind before rain. I sit up straight as she turns her gaze on me, angling her head slightly to the right — the better, I imagine, to peer into the immutable essence of my being.

She seems to like me, and I am very, very grateful. If this person likes me, I must be doing something right.

I’m glad Peter likes me too. I’d forgotten we’d met until he opened the door: the nerdy glasses, the graying ponytail, the boyish smile. That’s right, Uncle Dean’s second funeral[1], the one in New Jersey.  

The first funeral centered largely on Jesus, and the mortician shaved off Dean’s mustache, combed his hair and put him in a suit. I remember standing over the casket, trying my hardest, but I couldn’t summon the tears to mourn this skinny Christian man who bore a passing resemblance to my uncle. 

But in Jersey, it was light-hearted. At the reception, I sat at a table with Peter and a bunch of Dean’s other friends, and we told rollicking stories and laughed so hard we tilted back in our chairs. From up on a cloud, in flip-flops and a NASA t-shirt, his hair pointing every which way, Uncle Dean raised a root beer in a toast.

Peter is a link to my ancestry, to the memory of my mother’s family. He helped her through the death of her father when she was just a teenager. He comforted her when her eldest brother Rich died at age 38, leaving behind his wife and their 3-year-old son and tiny 1-year-old baby girl. He offered support when my grandmother was dying, over six long and painful years. And he was there when Dean, the only other remaining member of my mother’s family, finally had to go too.

My mom lost her entire family. It’s a testament to her strength that she has reached out and created a new one, of fine people like Peter. Don’t let anyone tell you different: The bravest thing a person can do is to love again.

I can see the love Peter has for my mother and my uncles in the way he looks at me. Abruptly, he breaks his dreamy silence. “Deborah,” he says. “Make her a mojo bag like the one you made for me.”

[1] If you knew Dean Powell — whose self-appointed nickname was “Mr. Famous” — you would understand why he had two funerals.

patrick and gina’s house

Patrick and Gina are never going to finish fixing up this house.

First of all, they’re never here. Patrick is the captain of a wooden sailing ship — and he’s the stable, sedentary one! Gina’s off working as a marine tech off the coast of Antarctica.

Second, there’s stuff everywhere. Art and antique tools all over the walls, books in the shelves, plants spilling over every windowsill, and how exactly are you going to move that massive model ship in the kitchen? 

Third, it’s a tremendously ambitious project. They didn’t just buy one house — they bought two, and converted the second one into a barn/workshop. You know, for all their other carpentry projects — restoring boats, constructing props for cabaret shows, and whatever it is they have planned for that pile of old bicycles.

It’s just unrealistic. They’re living in a dream…

… and Patrick and Gina and every other dreamer knows that’s exactly the point.

real badasses don’t look like what you think real badasses look like

For Charna, who gave me a place to stay and shared her story with me.

Charna is soft-spoken and small, as imposing as a wintertime shrub.  

But talk to her. You’ll find out she left behind a career as a biologist to be a wild land fire fighter, and spent decades jumping out of helicopters with men young enough to be her sons. She had to give that up when she turned 50, of course, but she couldn’t bring herself to go sit still in a laboratory, so now she works as a handywoman and goes on long bike and kayak trips on the weekends.  

What’s tougher than bare, living branches in the cold winter wind?

the reiserstown fire department

The sign on the door said Ladie’s Room. Bare walls, two narrow beds, a sand-colored dresser straight out of a freshman dorm, and me with a big confused smile on my face.

“It’s for female firefighters on duty, but we only have one and she’s not on tonight,” explained the chief. “So we figured you could just have the place to yourself. Showers are across the hall.”

When was the last time you were pleasantly surprised you got to sleep in a bed?

bonfire

I’m sitting around a bonfire in Virginia, drinking tea and eating cookies with:

• A Jordanian surgeon[1] and his mother

• A Saudi Arabian artist

• A travel nurse who spent more than 20 years in a mission hospital in Ethiopia

• An Old Testament Scholar

• Two mechanical engineers on their way to a NASCAR race

Who says America’s divided?

[1] He got a scholarship to NYU; now he does Operation Smile in three different African countries. In addition to providing a better life for his family, bringing his neighbors together, and hosting touring cyclists in his home. Educate the poor and they will make the world a better place.   

live righteously and love everyone

… was what it said on the tag of my hippie tea. I liked it so much that I got a piece of packing tape and stuck it on Lucky’s frame, so every time I looked down, I’d see that message.

Love everyone.

I want to believe this is possible. If you loved everyone, what would it look like? Would you have to expand your definition of love? What if — gasp! — there’s more than one kind of love, for friends, partners, family, self, humanity as a whole? What’s the root of these different kinds of love?  

To me, it’s acceptance. When you acknowledge and accept someone’s imperfections because those imperfections make them who they are, that’s love. Our flaws are our hardest truths, and they give love a place to grow. And if that’s true, then we should all just accept ourselves and stop trying to be perfect.  

Ha, ha. I say that, but of course I don’t believe it. I mean, I want everyone else to love themselves and be happy, but like… I need to lose at least 10 pounds before I can start working on self-acceptance.

“If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?” as the great sage RuPaul says. Well RuPaul, I’m gonna try.

In yoga, it’s common to set an intention before beginning practice, something to meditate on. What if my intention was to extend love to everyone I met on this trip? To treat all the strangers I meet with acceptance and respect and acknowledgement of the light within them, the light we all share? If I extended love to the people I met, it could only make the world a more loving place. And with love, everything’s possible. Even a poor kid from Malawi going to college in America.

dam

Signs clung to the chainlink fence like monarch butterflies, bearing words like WARNING and CAUTION and AVISO. There were exclamation marks trapped inside triangles, and a hapless clip-art silhouette thrown back by his nemesis, the lightning bolt. Beyond the fence, the Leesville Dam spanned the slender throat of a manmade lake. It was a somber fortress of tear-streaked concrete with turrets of scaffolding surrounding machinery that looked like an industrial Play Place. It was also, Google Maps insisted, the most direct route to my destination.

If I could cross here, I had 20 miles to go. But if I couldn’t, I’d have to backtrack 11 miles just to get to the next river crossing — not to mention the climb back up the steep, winding hill I had just descended as slowly and cautiously as an octogenarian walking down a flight of stairs.

A light breeze rattled the bare branches of the trees and ruffled the surface of the water, sending up the flat, metallic smell of river. The gate clanked. There was a small white sign to the left, a moth among the monarchs, with a few hopeful words: GATE ACCESS CONTACT NUMBER.

Now, honestly, what’s 11 miles in a 6,000-mile trip? And as for the hill, well, hills are the price you pay to eat pecan pie with whipped cream at 10 a.m. No, the real reason for what transpired was the simple thought: Wouldn’t it be funny if I could convince somebody to open the gate for me?

So I called the number twice; both times it went to this guy Andy’s voicemail. No worries — there was another sign with another phone number, this one for the American Electric Power headquarters. Why not? Like that magical incantation my mama taught me, “Can I speak to your supervisor[1]?”

It took all my schmoozin skills, but not only did I get Andy’s cell phone number, the guy I talked to wished me good luck. Unfortunately, Andy didn’t pick up when I called… nor when I called again. So naturally, I texted him:

hi Andy! my name’s brooke, and I’m biking cross-country. google routed me to your dam… any way you could open the gate so I could bike across?

Then I decided to give it five minutes. In those five minutes, I:

• contemplated the logistics of jumping the fence 

• tried two of my own PINs, as well as 6969, in the keypad

• Googled "Leesville Dam gate code" (to my surprise, there were no results)

The time had come. I called Andy’s office. No answer. I called his cell. It rang once, twice, three times, four— 

“Hello?” asked a gruff voice.

I couldn’t contain my excitement. "ARE YOU ANDY??"
"Yes," he laughed.
"Andy my man, you are the person I want to talk to. See, I'm trying to bike to Seattle, and Google Maps routed me over your lovely dam, but your lovely gate is blocking my way. Is there any way you'd let me cross? Otherwise, I have to bike 11 extra miles, and I know you don't wanna make me bike 11 whole extra miles. Look Andy, I promise I won't get hurt, and if I do, I double-promise I won't sue, so whaddaya say?"

There was a pause, swollen as a river surging against a set of watertight floodgates.

“Heh-heh, all right, I'll letcha over."

"ANDY YOU ARE A TRUE AMERICAN HERO!!!"

[1] And ohhhh I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to say it nicely. Say it like an entitled bourgeoisie and you are a nightmare. Say it like, “Hey man, I get it, I’m a pain in the ass and this is above your pay grade,” though, and you’re usually golden.

"bridge closed"

“bridge closed,”

warned the orange construction signs a mere two miles from where I was planning to camp. I wasn’t worried; it wasn’t like I was trying to get a whole car over the bridge. Construction signs tend not to apply to bicycles, I thought smugly, and approached the cluster of guys in fluorescent vests.

“Sick vests,” I said. “Any way I can walk my bike across?” 

The construction workers gave each other a look, and then parted to reveal a small chasm were the road should have been.

I smiled through the heartbreak. “I guess not! Where’s the nearest river crossing?” 

“About 10 miles that way,” said the foreman, jutting his chin back where I came from. As he launched into detailed instructions, one of the laborers stepped forward. He nervously avoided eye contact, but he straightened his shoulders and asked softly, “How much does your bike weigh?”

And then before I knew it, he had hoisted Lucky onto his shoulder. He leaned way back as he slipped down the crumbling walls of the pit, gracefully avoiding a face-level pipe at the bottom, climbed one-handed up a ladder, and finally made it to the catwalk on the other side. I scurried behind with a pannier in each hand.

“just shave it all off”

is what I told the barber as she tossed the cape over my shoulders.

There’s a powerful letting go when you watch your hair fall away from your scalp and fall to the ground in big tufts. Your face transforms as the shape of your skull emerges. Who is this stranger? You feel naked, vulnerable, ugly, tough, stripped-down, brave, anonymous, pure.

Of course, if you’re a woman, people start trying to figure out why you’d shave off your pretty hair[1]. They probably assume it’s something to do with sexual or gender identity. Or maybe you’re just crazy!

Fine, let judgmental people put me in their boxes[2]. Meanwhile, I no longer have to worry about helmet hair. And when I got to Seattle, with a halo of new growth emanating from my scalp, I can measure my cross-country bike tour in centimeters as well as miles.

[1] Well, unless it’s pubic, leg, or armpit hair, in which case we’re expected to obliterate it entirely.

[2] Which I’m pretty sure my very first WarmShowers hosts did later that night. They still shared their home with me, and I’m grateful, but I detected a little coolness in the way they explained my hair to their toddler, and they left me a neutral review on WarmShowers. Naturally, I obsessively went over every detail of my behavior — did I eat too much? should I have tried to stay up later? be more entertaining? was it wrong to stay with a host on my first night? — but I wonder if they would have been nicer if I had long hair.