where's home?

This question is incredibly hard for me to answer. I usually just go with, “I grew up in Vermont.” Some people are content with this. But others look at me like I’m just a silly billy and say, “Okay, but where do you live now?” Ahh jeez, when did this turn into the census? My two answers are:

“Uhh, nowhere really, I travel a lot.” (And then the person thinks I’m dodging the question.)

Or:

“Most recently, [insert location].” (And then the person thinks I’m a liar because the most recent location of late has been a research base in Antarctica.)

Can ya tell it makes me self-conscious? It’s a totally innocuous question; people want to know where they can root you. But what if you’re rootless? In a society where structure gives us meaning, people who exist across boundaries — nomads, drifters, vagabonds — are uncivilized, and maybe not trustworthy.

But what is home anyway? In the West, we use it as shorthand for “the place where you live,” but that’s not exactly accurate. If someone’s asking directions to your house, your home is an address. But take a cross-country road trip, and suddenly your home is a state. Get on a plane and cross an ocean, and home becomes an entire country.

You can feel at home in a lot of places: your parents’ house, your favorite café, your tent on the side of the road in a town you’ve never been. And you can live in a place you don’t consider your home — just ask a refugee, a hostage, a prisoner.

Or a lonely old woman in a nursing home.  

I’m standing on the sidewalk outside your house in Metuchen, New Jersey, and your ghost is floating at my shoulder.

I can’t believe they painted it that hideous yellow, you say.

The red was nicer, I think.

It looks like dog piss, you snap, and I smile. This was your home.

I remember every shelf, every windowsill, every inch of the walls was decorated with treasures. I remember the green shag carpet and the white dots on the ceiling of Uncle Rich’s old room, the smell of marinara bubbling on the stove and the sound of some old movie on the TV. I remember nighttime, the streetlamp through the window, and a room filled with moonlight and the hum of an oscillating fan and the far-off mewling of a siren. The headlights of passing cars cast sliding squares of light along the walls. I didn’t know what to call them, so I called them skeletons. I was a kid from the country, and I’d never seen so many skeletons in my entire life. 

And I remember you, in your slippers and your housecoat and your platinum-blonde hair. You painted watercolor landscapes and threw stuff when you were pissed off and whenever a waitress asked how you were doing, you’d say, “Anyone I can, honey.” 

Dolores Powell: grandmother, artist, force of nature.  

I get why Mom moved you to Raleigh; you couldn’t take care of the house anymore. But you were never the same. It reminded me of the babushkas of Chernobyl. Did you ever hear this story? After the nuclear disaster — which released 400 times the radiation as the bombing of Hiroshima — everyone was relocated. But 1200 people, mostly tough old broads like you, kept coming back. The government couldn’t keep them out, and they figured, well, they’re old, so let em live out the last few years of their lives in peace.

The ones who came back to Chernobyl ended up outliving the ones who didn’t. That’s a beautiful truth, isn’t it? Stubborn old ladies are more powerful than nuclear radiation.   

But you lost that power when you moved to Raleigh. Without your social networks, your connection to your environment, you were a prisoner. You left your home for an apartment, and left that apartment for a room in an old folk’s home, and then you left this world for the next.

I am standing alone on the sidewalk outside a home I can’t enter. I am a ghost.

I think back on all the places I’ve lived. The ramshackle farmhouse I grew up in, the 16 acres that surrounded it. The muddy pond where we swam in the summer, the frozen hills we’d sled down in the winter, the milkweed field we’d tear through in the fall, sending thistledown drifting into the crisp air against a backdrop of flaming foliage. My mom sold that house when I was 19; now it’s a cold haunted place I only visit in the perpetual twilight of my dreams.  

The hunter-green Hennessey Hammock where I slept like a rock when I was hiking the Appalachian Trail. The apartment Jill and I shared in Ithaca that always smelled like lavender from the aromatherapy studio downstairs. My house in Chikweo, the cool concrete floor and the doorway where I would lean and watch the sunset. All these places I’ve lived and loved, all these places I can never return. 

“Where’s home?” people ask me.

Nowhere, man, I think turning away from my grandmother’s old house.

And I drift away, as detached and insignificant as a wisp of milkweed fuzz on the breeze.

eminado

All my Afro-pop fans know what I’m talking about. For you Americans, “eminado” is a beautiful word invented by the Nigerian pop producer Don Jazzy for the super-catchy Tiwa Savage single of the same name. The music video has 25 million views on YouTube — go on, make it 25 million and one.

Anyway, “eminado” means “good-luck charm.” What single word in English do we have to mean good-luck charm? I guess you could just say “charm,” but it has other meanings that muddy the waters; so too with “fetish.” Amulets refer to jewelry. Juju, totem, idol: no no no. Phylactery — whoever heard of a phylactery? The only word that comes close is “talisman,” but it sounds ominous to me (blame it on Stephen King and Peter Straub). I’ll stick with eminado, thanks.

Now, do I actually believe that the black tourmaline created a forcefield of protection? Well, I haven’t read any peer-reviewed studies that prove or disprove the existence of a forcefield of protection created by black tourmaline, if that’s what you’re asking. And I certainly wouldn’t put myself in dangerous situations and think, “Hey, no worries — I’ll let the black tourmaline take the heat on this one.”

But I’d cheer for a marathon runner. Wouldn’t you?

And since there weren’t throngs of people lined up across America to cheer me on, I could make do with eminado.

The mojo bag: an earnest gift, Deb and Peter’s way of saying they believed in what I was doing and wished me a safe journey. The four-leaf clover at the front of my bike, leading the way. The pink bandana, which has accompanied me on every adventure since that road trip with my sister; a constant reminder that I’ve already come a long way. My auspicious turkey feather, giving Lucky wings to fly. And my mission.

On one level, I recognized that doing this bike tour for a cause made me a sympathetic figure — who wouldn’t want to lend a hand to a kind-hearted Returned Peace Corps Volunteer helping a smart poor kid chase his dream? But I also felt my mission protected me on a karmic level. I wasn’t just helping Friday; I was exuding positive energy, and inspiring positivity in others.

I’m not sure kindness is inherent; nor cruelty, for that matter. It’s a choice. In a world where bad things sometimes happen for no reason, how powerful is it that we always have the choice to be kind? And how beautifully simple this truth: the more good things we put out into the world, the more good things there will be in the world to find.

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.