"I'm Gettin' My Own"

Tucumcari New Mexico: The Mother Road '07

As is the case with most notable occasions in my life – some pleasurable, most problematic – this one started with a man.  A man and a motorcycle. 

In the summer of 2007, after a frantic, ass-numbing, 6800 mile cross country ride as a passenger, astride my friends Harley Davidson Road King Classic, I climbed off that bike, looked him square in the eye and said, ‘I’m gettin’ my own.’  It didn’t occur to me then that I was making a decision that would affect me so profoundly that I would claim it ‘saved my life’ (and sadly, cost him his).  I made the decision based on travel preferences at that moment... not life saving choices. 

I have been hopping on the back of a boys motorcycle since I was sixteen-years-old; not much changed as I got older. I was still attracted to the ‘Bad Boy’ persona of a biker, the thrill of riding, the need for speed. 

I had rode ‘two up,’ with my friend ‘Butch’ (of course this isn’t his real name)  for thousands of miles in the few years we spent together - which means I was a passenger only. Initially, I enjoyed the ease of being the passenger - ‘Fender Candy,’ ‘Back Rest,’ ‘Seat Cover,’  and it wasn’t too difficult to wrap my legs around this man for a wonderful ride - both literally and figuratively. However, he was all about ‘how fast can we get there? What’s the quickest way?’  I soon realized - somewhere near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon - that he was all about the destination and not the journey - both literally and figuratively. 

My epiphany came during a hellish ride in the opposite direction of the Grand Canyon, where we experienced scorching heat, then freezing rain blown in by honest-to-God dust devils that appeared out of nowhere along the horizon, with a smattering of hail that surrounded us so quickly it caught us completely off guard, therefore the rain gear was still in the pack. I felt like Dorothy, only I knew it wasn’t Kansas. Rather than stop and take cover, my friend just squeezed the throttle to breakneck speed, on frighteningly slick asphalt, to ‘outrun it,’ a favorite phrase of his when faced with bad weather.  Me? I just hung on for dear life, mouthing a silent prayer for our safety.  After traveling like this for the better part of two years, I knew in that one galvanizing moment that my desire was not to ‘outrun’ life, but to experience it fully and to do so, I would need to ‘get my own.’

I loved everything about the motorcycle; the look, the feel, the sound, the clothes, the camaraderie among riders, the wind in my face,  and most of all those two wheels as a mode of travel. I knew in my very soul that I would be a rider who was about the ‘journey’ and not necessarily the ‘destination.’ My desire was to experience everything the geography had to offer along the way, not watch it fly by at 90 mph, missing the stunning landscapes, and outrunning the bad weather. I did not know then, that my soul was screaming for the opportunity to be nurtured; that my desire to ‘ride my own,’ was my siren call to ‘live my own’ life, to discover that part of Me that felt as though it were shriveling up and dying on the vine, that part of Me that yearned to be unleashed. The man and the motorcycle came along at just the right time.

Shortly after that frantic Nine Day Road Trip from Daytona Beach to L.A. and back in 2007,  I felt as though my life had started to crumble in the center and become raggedy at the edges. I am accustomed to adversity and struggle in my life –death, divorce, addiction, recovery,  - the usual. I wasn’t prepared for the ‘loss’ of my youngest daughter and the heartache and havoc that ensued, followed by my loss of income, the rediscovery and subsequent loss of the love of my life  and finally having my home and my job jeopardized. 

Someone's Mom

As if all of these challenges were not enough, add to the list.....aging. I had come to the realization that I could no longer pass for ‘middle age;’ that safe, in - between - young - and - old status that I had wallowed in for a few decades. Over dinner and casual conversation one evening with my women friends , I referred to myself as ‘middle age,’ and one of the women at the table - who has known me for 20 years - said, 

‘Deb. You are only ‘middle age’ if you live to be 106.’

Boom..there it was. 

I had crossed the line; that invisible delineation between youth, middle age, and old. 

‘Line?! What line?! I swear I didn’t see a line!’ I silently screamed! 

‘Old’ is not palatable; I had just gotten comfortable with being a Middle Age Babe, and now I was faced with redefining my Role as well as practicing acceptance of the inevitable. 

I was 52-years-old; my oldest daughter would graduate high school the following year, my youngest daughter ‘left’ our family unit, and I was facing an empty nest, an empty occupation, an empty bank account, a quantifiably ‘empty,’ love life, and a bankrupt ideology of what comprised my ‘purpose’ in life. If Maslow’s Theory was correct, I was still a long way from the Pinnacle of his triangular reference of Life Stages - Self Actualization.  I was soul-sick, I was left wondering, ‘Is this all there is?’  For the better part of eighteen years, I had focused my energy on raising two daughters - solo - and simultaneously finishing my formal education and earning a living. We did ‘okay,’ however, I reached this point in my journey and realized I was again alone on the Life Road, and my role as ‘Super Mom’ was coming to a close.  That point in life for women when we realize that we’ve taken our offspring as far as we can in the day-to-day upbringing; now its time to push them from the nest and watch them fly...Bittersweet. For most of my life I had been cast in the role of Someone’s Daughter, Someone’s Wife, Someone’s Mom...my psyche was howling for a new Role in Life I could call My Own.

Self Actualization Re-Visited

On that sweltering day back in July of ’07, I didn’t realize it then, but my declaration of ‘I’m Gettin’ My Own,’ as I climbed off the back of Butches’ motorcycle for almost the last time, would be a metaphor for ‘life,’ as well.  Not only would I ‘get my own’ motorcycle, in the process, I excavated ‘my own life’  from the dismal  heap of circumstances that surrounded me.

 At a time when most women my age were buying those ridiculous red hats and accessorizing their bright red apparel with purple boas….I went out and bought a Harley-Davidson and proceeded to accessorize my life with leather and chrome. The motorcycle would become a metaphor for life; a vehicle for moving forward out of the adversity, for discovering that which feeds my soul, and for giving my life a direction, and a purpose...with passion.