I spent the summer of 2017 on my bicycle on the bike trails along the Fox River. I lived there with the red wing blackbirds and the great blue herons. Except for at night, I didn’t live in my childhood home. A sour mold cured slowly in those walls. I fled to the river to escape it.
After my brother harmed himself and blamed me, and my dad blamed me as well for upsetting him, I left. I spent the whole day out biking on the river-path far from the west to the east to the north. I felt like a little boy run-away from home. And when I returned, I felt like the delinquent who roosted in idleness in his families stark bed sheets, tracking ill found dirt and failure into the house from the pits of the valley.
I wasn't those things of course, but I had never been allowed to be them either. Deliquency was reserved for the others. I was to swallow my feelings and be good and perfect and smiling for their sakes.
My eyes drooped as I pedaled down the bike path, trying to become empty. I needed to empty it all out. In it’s void, I drank in the beauty of the world. The river was entrancing. The bike path was shaded by mature trees and tended by many birds and creatures. I was one of them.
My understanding of the town I had grown up in changed. I never really caught on to just how segregated everything was. All the white soccer moms and business dads I was familiar with typically ferried themselves in cars between private, monied spaces. You’d still see them riding bikes along the river too, but I definitely saw far more Mexican grandpas and Latino kids relaxing along the river. I got used to saying “buenos” to folks as we passed each other. Sometimes I’d get looks like I was invading, and I felt bad, but I really liked being by the river too.
I stopped at a convenience store where the cashier reminded me a lot of my mom. She was small, blonde, kind of silly and Swedish, so I guessed I was probably related to her somehow, who knows.
The Fox Valley as a whole felt more full by bike. In the car, everything was made to look so fast and small and insignificant. But by bike, it’s grandeur enveloped me like a big hug that I craved. I’d gone halfway across the world and back, but the Fox Valley now felt like it’s own encompassing dimension of beauty and terror and history. It was like a secret forest I could vanish into and feel unseen. I was sick of being defined by things like school, sex, and social achievement. Here, I could resonate with the sunbeams and cat-tails, the sound of bike tires on the gravel path. Maybe I’m like the Red-Wing Blackbird or a Birch tree. No one understands me more.
I felt broken, but the river pieced me back together. Sometimes it helped me feel invincible. With the strong, stocky legs of my ancestors, I could whip around tight turns in the path and fly faster than anyone. The endorphins from cycling pumped through my muscles and I never felt more masculine and euphoric. I learned how to bike with no hands, I would cross my arms and sit back and look at the passing colors, breath in the sweet smells of different herbs along the trail. It smelled delicious like peanuts or basil. I wondered where these senses had been my whole life.
The beautiful world poured into my soul and I felt like a limitless, gorgeous beam of sunlight as I sang to the trees and sky. I was a fell, feminine fairy-maiden of the forest. Music poured out of my soul clear and ringing and surely I glowed with a color unseen to the human eye. I longed to be loved and cherished, just as I loved and cherished the forest. I was the earth and wished for bright green growth to spread and celebrate and dance with joy in my rib cage.
I stayed out till the sun grew low and my tired muscles reminded me that I could not sleep outside. Procrastinating on that existential reality, I recooped for an hour on the vinyl booth seats of a restaurant in Aurora, drinking glass after glass of water and feeling this strange mixture of emptiness, enchiladas, and a belonging in the wilderness.
I once passed by a creek underneath the railroad and saw a kid fishing water out of it and into a plastic gallon jug. In the same spot, I passed by that one guy who I’d see at my job in the library, the one who always comes in to charge his phone and fall asleep next to the reference books. I came to understand there was a homeless camp somewhere along that area of the bike path.
I called my friend Maggy and asked her if I could stay with her for the night, as I didn’t feel good going home. She was living with a family friend, she said I couldn’t stay the night, but we could eat tacos and hang out. I parked my bike at the library and waited for her to pick me up.
Her family friends seemed passively disgusted by me and I couldn’t figure out why. I reasoned it was because they saw me as needing and were afraid I’d ask them for things. They understood I had no car, I got around on my bike and that meant there was something wrong with me. I couldn’t participate in society as they saw fit, and the dysfunction I was experiencing at home was a further mark on my character. I was unwanted. Who’s to say if any of those judgments were in truth from their minds, but it was a feeling I was familiar with. Atleast I got along with the dog.
Maggy dropped me off back at home past dark. I kicked off my shoes at the door and climbed in bed with my clothes still on and went to sleep under the white sheets, waking up to bed bugs biting at my face. I remember laying there in the humidity, feeling again like that no good delinquent son who spent the day lazing by the river instead of putting in a good days work in the fields. What field? Where was I to work? Between the Walmart Parking lots and concrete overpasses? In the exhaust of the highway or some decrepit horrendous capitalistic monstrosity?
My brother reclused for a weeks and then pretended it never happened. My dad actually apologized, though. It was touching. I was happy to finally have my pain recognized by a family member. I love my family. But, that didn’t change history. Both me, those walls, and the air between all knew that I needed to fly away.