Flamingo Painted Feelings

How often do you watch your loved one climb into the family car as he drives off to work and think “I hope he comes home alive”? Flamingos, the graceful but yet embarrassingly colored bird that stands on one leg and dips its beak into clear water to sustain itself as seen in tropical landscapes. Flamingos don’t think about what they should or should not do. For them, life is based on an instinct for survival. I was never a fan of flamingos, they’re too… pink. But growing up in the suburbs allows for the sighting of many flamingos.

Growing up with a father who was rarely home weekends, I remember the times he was. There are so few they stand out in one’s mind. On Sundays my mother left me at home to roller blade in the driveway while she went to church, and dad worked on my sister’s corvette, smoky. He always tinkered with that car, sometimes I wonder if he did something so that it would smoke intentionally when started

Ever ridden a motorcycle?

The day my father was given one of his father’s old bikes, I remember loading it onto a trailer and towing it the ten miles home. To a little girl, the bike was tall and formidable. Now a days, it looks like a lonely outcast from some Neolithic monster age with its travel pack and second seat. It had to be large I guess, my grandfather, “Papa Blackbeard” isn’t so tiny. But my grandparents still live in that house, and the motorcycle still sits in that same trailer like a flamingo, perfectly balanced on a kickstand.

A relationship doesn’t simply fall off of Mount Kilimanjaro. Love or “upendo” in Swahili, can’t be plucked out of thin air. Maybe if we were magicians we could begin to fathom the thought of plucking a particle out of the air and making it into an object, a tangible affair. Instead relationships need to be slowly coerced into existence. Building a friendship beforehand can be crucial or detrimental. A lot of people believe in love at first sight. Is this true? Maybe people simply fall into naïve physical obsession with the symmetrical faces they prefer over people with non-symmetrical features. Then the obsession grows. Sounds cool to me. So who could possibly explain this “love at first sight” phrase to producers of romance movies outside of its literal meaning?

Random thought, how is your sense of balance? I bet it’s not as good as a flamingos’. And I bet you were knocked off the railroad tie you were walking on when you saw your high school sweet heart for the first time at the country fair.

But yes, as you were wondering, my relationship with someone involves a bike. He had it before he met me, and I’m not going to be the girlfriend who charges into his life and changes everything on him. I wouldn’t desire to be the girlfriend his “guy-friends” hate and try to persuade to dump. Nope, I will never demand he get rid of his bike. If it’s an object he enjoys then he might as well keep it; I’m not his mother, demanding he get rid of his favorite toy. This toy, the very crotch rocket that could, if I chose to take the opportunity, give me the most exciting head rush I have ever experienced.

However there is a problem. I have no phobia of death; only the small panic attacks I have learned to control are contradictory to that statement. Who fears death on a daily basis, the basis that you know if you get into your car, you might not survive? I am scared of such machines. A small, insignificant fear that is not noticeable until he climbs onto his bike; an accelerated pulse rate that could make me explode with anxiety as he slips the helmet over his crew cut. But I have spent a spring, summer and fall asking God that he keep my man safe as he drives away from me on his bike. And I know I will continue to do so as long as he has the demonic thing.

And here is the scary part: there is an article that shows the percentages of fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles of travel from 1995 to 2004. Each year shows an increased percent. From 1997 to 2004, the percent is doubled. In 2006 about 4,935 people were killed. Vehicle failures were found to be 3% of the problem, while another 3% involved animals and roadway defects. Road safety is a major concern in New England; nasty winters occur here, bringing with them frost heaves. These frost heaves don’t get better as the weather does come spring time. Plus, the added damages the plows make are no help. Living in rural Maine, there are many dirt roads and the tarred roads also have potholes.

An added danger factor is that motorcycles are very hard to see. In the daytime, they have more visibility and yet the chance of not seeing them is twenty in one hundred. At night time, the likelihood of seeing a motorcyclist is even smaller. The headlight is an added measure, but there is only one of them as opposed to the two headlights a car has. The chances of hitting a motorcycle at night are close to 50%. So if you buy a bike, get a bright color!

I guess I should have suggested that if my dad were to repaint his Honda, that it be bright yellow. It would make a humorous picture at least. But alas, the maroon 1985 Honda Goldwing that sits on the trailer like a lonely flamingo, has been out of place in every location it has been moved to. Having relocated three times since the bike was given to my father, it has come with us every time, never leaving the trailer. Now it sits in the mid coast region of Maine. My father has always wanted to put a new battery in, just to see if it runs anymore. My mother has never let him. She’s always found a way to keep him busy with different tasks these past thirteen years. She has also encouraged him several times to get rid of it; he’s had good offers from potential buyers.

I know he won’t get rid of it. There is an emotional attachment my mother will never understand. Where it sits now, with a tarp covering that usually ends up on the ground because of the wind, this out of place flamingo practicing its balancing act in a beat up trailer, serves as some kind of reminder every time my father goes in and out of the driveway.

Having been on bike only once in my life, I know I have not yet felt “the wind in my hair”. After all, 30 miles per hour on a crotch rocket intended to race does nothing to fuel ones need for speed. My fiancé’s Yamaha YZF600R that sits in a garage in Benton, Maine has many names. It was introduced to Europe in 1997 and was called a Thundercat. In other places it is called a café racer. Production of this bike lasted from 1994 to 2007. Colors this bike could be bought in varied throughout the years, mostly a theme of blue and white with modification colors. These racers have a compression ratio of 12:1, meaning how much power can be put forth by the pistons in the piston chamber. They can have either 5 or 6 speeds, weigh 430 to 450 pounds depending on added modifications and are about 6 feet in length.

To me the café racer is jet black, a color distinction I never understood; jet black…. Like the grey color of a fighter jet? I don’t understand. But to my fiancé it is a rainbow of variety. Maybe to him it falls somewhere along the lines of romantic, action packed escapes. Trying to describe this bike as charismatic is hard to do with the mixed feelings it provokes. Viewing this machine in person gives a powerful image, one of incredibly fast speeds, badass bikers in leather and sexy women in bikinis draped over the plush seat and slick gas tank. The tires give the on looker an excited-nervous feeling; the curiosity as to what the road might feel like underneath at high speeds.

However, it is as such fast speeds that my brain creates the worst case scenarios involving the badass biker. What if he doesn’t come home? How do I react when the call comes from the white sterile prison, holding him with tubes and intravenous fluids? As he goes out the door and revs the machine, I try not to watch him pull out of the drive. I try not to watch till he is out of view; listen to the gears change as he goes down the road and out of hearing range. I try not to cry in fear when there is no sign of him left, and I send a prayer up to the sky with shaky hopes that my mother’s faith was not in vein, that there is a God to watch over him. Keeping the phone nearby I do whatever I can to keep my mind off of the machine and it’s handler.

But it’s hard to do. I want to be with him and at the same time know I am not brave enough. I wish I was a sexy devil may care woman who could ride with him. Get my own machine even. And as I think that I wonder what I would buy, what color it would be. But alas, I can’t see it.

My badass biker wants to sell or trade my summer nightmare. He’s been trying to for the past six months. He’s had good offers, less than what he wants for it, but still good offers. I want him to sell it, get something useful like a car or truck, he mostly agrees. But he is not advertising his sale as hard as I would like him to (if this weren’t an essay I would put an advertisement in here for him). I believe there is the same emotional attachment my father has with his bike. Just like my mother does not understand the attachment my father has to his bike, I do not even begin to fathom an understanding as to my biker’s attachment to his machine.

These feelings of concern and fear, hate and wild abandon to jump on and ride away are confusing. My views and opinions are shaky. The image of a pink lawn decoration being blown off it’s one leg in the wind comes to mind. I wonder if my mother ever had these flamingo painted feelings.