Re-membering
Memory is like the trail of a jet cutting through the clear blue sky. That white, firm track soon starts to billow, fade and dismember. “What was that wail from the sky” asked the gravedigger, squinting up from the pit. “Supersonic plane,” you answer. “Left a trail from one horizon to the other.” You both look up and there is nothing. You draw the line with your hand. Horizon to horizon.
It was after my first marriage had dissolved. There was much sadness and confusing residual love. But we had lived in parallel universes for years and even the birth of our son could not bring the two of us out of our isolation. With child support squared away for 12 months and enough money left over to buy a bicycle and feed myself for a year, I strapped a tent and sleeping bag to the rear panniers, water containers to the front, squeezed a few spare tires under my saddle, and fled.
This is a story and I have told occasionally over the years. I headed south from my parents home in Netanya, through Israel and Egypt, jumped on a sailing boat to Eritrea. And from Massawe in Eritrea there is a very rough transcontinental road that winds through Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. I spent 6 months on the road. I still have the crocodile skin sun damage on my upper hands as an unenviable reminder. But gradually the photos and the retelling have replaced the somatic experience.
There was a moment in the journey when I was faced with a choice of taking the road southwest to Malawi, closer to my final destination of South Africa. Or turning to the east, a 100-mile stretch mostly downhill to Dar es Salaam, the coastal capital of Tanzania. For over a week I had holed up at a local church outpost recovering from malaria and dysentery. Clean water was always my biggest problem. And my bike tires had also taken a beating, now held together in patches with dental floss. The wind was always in my face and hills lasted for hours. Basically I was beat. So, you would think, no brainer. Go left, downhill to the city and repair yourself and your bike. Right. But while I sat on the edge of the pavement, hounded by kids selling beer-can cars, I knew that decision would end my journey. The trajectory in my mind was to return to where I grew up in South Africa, and begin again. I can still smell the dust and hear the rumble of trucks at that armpit on the map of east Africa. I turned east.
So that is the story I tell. I was sick, the bike was falling apart, an incredible adventure while it lasted.
Recently I told the story to my new love, because she was deeply curious, not so much about the journey, but my why. What was I looking for? And did I find it? Why did I lift myself back onto the bike and turn left to finish the tour?
“I had done my time. I was worn thin, lonely, and hurting. I had done my time.”
I sat in stunned silence at my own voice. After all these years, I understood what that trip was all about.
I had left my toddler son, deserted his vulnerable mother, given up on them, shunned the working world of phone bills and taxes, and fled. I had spent almost 200 days and nights alone in a really rough part of the world. With a few hundred dollars. And I was now broken, exhausted and sick. I had paid my dues. Not to them but to my broken heart. And with my penance done, I could now carry on with my life.
I heard myself speaking this aloud. Voice clear, shy. I was re-membering this experience another way. Finally, after all these years, I am able to hold this greater truth. And as I write this, even now, the tears roll. With compassion for those I have wronged, and especially for that young man who found no other way to face his guilt and grief.
