The why's

I anticipate people asking me why I don't drink. And one of the reasons, maybe a small one that helps create a bit of levity and steer the conversation to a place where no one, particularly me, feels uncomfortable, is that I really had no desire to become a drunken mommy blogger. One who makes merry of tipsy play dates, that necessary half bottle of wine when the kids go down, only to repent when coming to the conclusion that our happy drinking mommy is now a source of misery to not only her family, but to herself.

Jokes about drinking are rife around my girls' school, and I was a big contributor. Last year, in an email conversation with my friend G, we were talking about a small gathering for the parents in our kids' classroom, kind of a getting to know everyone thing. I kidded that I was going to get soooo wasted, as I heard wine was on the agenda. I thought this was funny, the idea of staggering around the various Montessori-style play areas, screeching about tuition costs and passing out in the cozy nook, goat cheese crostini in hand. On a recent excursion to the Staten Island Ferry that I helped chaperone, I asked if there would be gin. Everyone always laughs. They laugh with what I see is relief, a sense of parenting-in-this-crazy-city comradery. 

I don't make booze joke anymore, for the obvious reasons, but there was a recent cocktail night that I decided against attending, and the emails lobbying back and forth about the (desperate) need for a drink, to be with grown-ups (because this is what grown-ups do, what grown-ups look forward to when escaping the jammy hands of our children for a night) made me feel very much alone for a moment - like flying without a net. It was fleeting, but it was there. 

I'm proud of myself that I've quit drinking, but at the same time, I know what normal drinkers think about AA goers like me. I want to say that I wasn't that bad, that you probably wouldn't even have noticed that I had a problem. I want to redeem myself in their imaginary eyes. As to why I don't drink, I want to be able to give the short answer, the one that will put people at ease and get myself off the hook, but I know that with most things in life, the important things at least, it's never that simple. 

History repeating

When I was in college, I would come home on weekends, drink with my parents until an argument of some kind started, then sit in my Dad's Lazyboy with an enormous vodka and cranberry and watch movies until four in the morning. This was back when there was a late late movie, and you could see films like "The Friends of Eddie Coyle," "Bad Ronald", and "Trilogy of Terror." Movies that would stay with me despite the alcohol and exhaustion. My Dad's business went bankrupt during that time, and we all took to self-medicating, and my Dad, with his weak stomach, would spend the end of the evening vomiting behind a large pine tree next to the pool. My mother drank champagne, several splits, and her slurring was legendary. I didn't touch alcohol until I was 19 years old, but I was quick to catch up, as the melancholy in our once warm, happy home had taken over as there was no more wood for the fire, the cars were re-possessed and my mother's desk became littered with unpaid bills. We were, all three of us, drinking ourselves down the drain.

I used to drive them home from restaurants. I wasn't the designated driver - I drank just as much as they did, but for some reason I would end up behind the wheel of my Dad's white Mercedes. As if they were trying to stick to some paradigm of parental responsibility, as if I, their daughter, couldn't possibly be as intoxicated as them. On one particular night, we endured a tense, gruesome meal that we couldn't afford, where my Father cried all during dinner that my life will amount to nothing because his business amounted to nothing, and with a degree in painting, how on earth would I be able to survive without his money? After time spent in the bar after our uneaten dinner, we ended up winding along the backroads of Pennsylvania horse county, going much too fast, the drinks my parents consumed converting their tears to hysterical laughter. They slid around the backseat (why bother with seat belts?), arms tangled with legs, and I remember being acutely aware as we sped through the cold, dark countryside that everything I knew, everything I loved and depended on was making its own quick departure, and it would remain this way for a very long time. 

A first

I rode with a group for the first time this morning in Central Park. Well, it wasn't actually a group, it was two women, one of whom I briefly met last month when I was tagging behind her and her husband on an unusually beautiful fall day. I managed to keep up with them, and the woman, S, gave me her card and asked if I would be interested in their weekday rides - at 5:30 in the morning. I think I visibly blanched, then I explained that I live in TriBeca, and that it takes me close to 45 minutes just to get to the park. But today I met up with her, her husband and a woman named C. who is a trainer and does triathlons.

It's strange riding with other people. I always looked at exercise as solitary experiences, which is what I naturally prefer. But it was really nice being with people who are just as crazy about bikes as I am, and maybe more so. They all have backgrounds in competing and being trainers, and I feel more like a newbie than ever. But I kept up, riding alongside them over three and a half loops of the park, and back on the West Side bike path to fight relentless headwinds. A three hour ride.

I've never been a joiner, rarely ventured outside my own, solitary comfort zone. But I feel like this is going to make me a better rider, and possibly, a more well-rounded, happy person.

Thanksgiving

I have so much to be thankful for. Top of mind, of course, is my family. But there are also other things, like where we live, how we live. That we have heat, hot water, a home. It's hard to not think of all the people without these very basic things, and how they're managing to cope.

I am also incredibly grateful for the gift of sobriety, which I have given myself. Not drinking is a real relief. A few months before I really quit, I read a piece by Garrison Keillor about his own sobriety. The thing that struck close to home, despite his hateful comments about gay families,was that when he decided to quit it took the question of quitting, cutting back, rationing - all the things we do to avoid the inevitable - off the table. We had Thanksgiving dinner at our friends' home. It was just a few people; their family, and a friend from their son's school. I ran into our friend G, who was hosting the dinner with her husband and son coming out of Whole Foods the day before Thanksgiving. The first thing she asked me was about whether I was okay drinking vodka instead of gin, and I told her that I had quit drinking. She was the first person I'vve told, and it felt good to get it out there, and also reinforces my commitment to not drink again. While at the dinner, I drank fizzy water, chatted with G's parents, and noticed that no one was really drinking that much. But the wine came out during dinner, and so did the Scotch, which A drank as well. I was fine with it, probably because it got my mind started on what I would have been doing at the moment if I were drinking. I know I would have had too small a glass for my vodka and tonic. I know I would have been creeping around for constant refills, thinking no one notices, but they always do. I would have never abandoned my glass. It would have been in my hand at all times. I would have been unpleasantly full and drunk - not a pleasant feeling. I would have wondered if I was slurring. I would have still been going, probably on red wine, while everyone else had already switched to chamomile or mint tea. I would have breathed alcohol fumes all over my children as we rode home in an overheated cab (I don't want this to be part of their childhood memories like it is with me and my parents). I would have woke this morning in a fog of guilt, shame and of course, with a hammering headache and sour stomach. Instead I felt clear, clear, clear. And all those things that went through my mind as a drinker, all those things I felt the day after, are all off the table.

Tonight

It's been easy lately to not drink. Just as I had gotten into the habit of drinking every night, now I am in the habit of not drinking every night. Because of this it's not difficult to make the leap to thinking that my drinking problem was just that - a bad habit. It would be easy to do this, and it would be wrong.

These are the tricks alcohol plays with your head. But I am so early in, still floating gratefully in that so-called Pink Cloud, that sobriety to me really does feel like a gift, and to go and get loaded would be like switching off the sun.

We had dinner tonight with another family that go to our girls' school. You really get to see how normal people drink in situations like this. This is the kind of restuarant whose brand is about whiskey and Martini's. The bar is the kind a drinker feels was made just for them, with football playing on the televisions, the deep mahogany of the wood, and row after row of softly backlit bottles of bourbon, gin and vodka, many small batch and artisinal.

Our friend H, the husband, ordered a drink that was part lemonade, part vodka. No one else had alcohol. I had a Boylan's grape soda, with was my usual drink on Sunday afternoons when we came here during the summer for lunch. H. sipped his drink, his daughter on his lap, and when he finished towards the end of meal, he didn't order another one. Now if I was still drinking, I would have finished my first within 10 minutes, then the repercussions of ordering another would have been pinging through my head for the remainder of our time at the table (what would they think? Would A. be upset with me?). And of course I would have ordered another one, would have walked home with everyone in the slightly bitter November night, feeling lighter and heavier at the same time. I would have walked in the door with my family, fuzzy headed, and wondered how I would feel in the morning and if it would affect my cycling.

But tonight, I walked in the door and only felt full from the burger and the stolen bites of my daughters' cake lollipops. Full and happy.

My first time

My love of the bike started slowly. I remember pushing the girls in their stroller with A. on a sunny Saturday afternoon in TriBeca, and watched a man taking a beautiful Cannondale hybrid out for a test spin. At first is was all about aesthetics. Matte black, very little graphics, very sleek yet muscular looking bike.

A bicycle, I thought. Hmm. Maybe I should get a bicycle. We have storage in the basement of the building, there's the west side bike path right across the street, why not? But for the first time I didn't walk into the bike shop looking to buy the best looking, most expensive bike. I wasn't sure I would like it. I remembered my brief dalliance with a yellow road bike when I was fifteen years old. I bought it with money saved working at a garden center, and hopped on thinking it would be fun to cycle the 10 miles back home. All I remember are the hills that didn't seem all that threatening when sitting in the passenger seat of a car, and the super thin tires that kept losing air. I don't remember how I made it home that day. This was before cellphones, but I'm pretty sure I don't remember pedaling up the driveway.

So this time I used common sense. I didn't want to spend more than seven hundred dollars. I had no idea what a hybrid was (it's basically the speed of a road bike combined with the ruggedness of a mountain bike), but the first bike I test rode was the one I bought - a 2010 Giant Rapid 3.

I hadn't exercised in five years. My back was still a problem. I literally had my ass handed to me as I refused to wear any kind of spandex. I bought a giant white helmet that weighed a ton and had no ventilation. My first ride was brutal. I made it to the park next to Chelsea Piers, and for those who don't live in NYC, that's about three miles on the flat. I sat on a bench and a man walked by and whistled. "Nice bike," he said. "Beautiful." I felt like an idiot. A defeated idiot.

I don't remember much of those first few months, but I stuck with it. I changed my saddle, bought a pair of bike shorts that I wore under some sweatpants, and got a lighter helmet with vents. I celebrated small but huge milestones, like the first time I rode all the way to the little red lighthouse under the George Washington bridge, the first time I made it up the hill towards the cloisters, riding over the Brooklyn Bridge, and doing laps of Prospect Park.

Cycling saved me from the city. It saved me from the stress and exhaustion of being a mom of twins. It gave me reason to be out in the world, to step outside my comfort zone and surprise myself with what I could accomplish, who I could be. Last summer I bought my first road bike, a Scott Contessa CR1 Team. I have all the kit. I wear the spandex without apology, despite my bruised up, pale legs. I clip my feet into the pedals even though in the beginning I fell over twice in the city streets, more embarrassing than painful. My socks match my bike, a color scheme of black, red and white. I rode in the Medio portion (64 miles) of the New York GranFondo in 2012, and this May I will do the 109 miles up Bear Mountain.

Cycling has allowed me to move through this world fearlessly. To live in the moment, something so important, and something I always failed to do. In a small part I owe my sobriety to cycling, because I never want to let myself down on the bike.

For love of a good bicycle

Cycling saved my life.
No, I was never going to drop dead without it, but I can say without exaggeration that it saved my life.

After having a lousy time getting pregnant, I had a lousy pregnancy. Grateful beyond measure, but lousy. Five months on bed rest, a liver condition that made me itch uncontrollably, heartburn that prevented me from even a few sips of water, worry about little E, the smaller twin and her not-very-fast-heartrate, and oh yeah, my Dad died after a relapse of prostate cancer.

The pregnancy wrecked my body. The time spent lying in bed wasted my muscle mass, and the strain of carrying twins gave me a hernia and diastasis, which basically means that my stomach muscles had torn, leaving a ridge in the center of my stomach, and I no longer had any strength in my core. When I picked the girls up, it was with my back, which then led to a disc problem.

I have always been athletic. I spent the best part of my time in high school out running, usually 6 miles a day. I ran in the rain, in the dead of winter in hard-packed snow. At night through quiet, dark neighborhoods. I played softball, rode horses and competed in shows, and everything I did revolved around being active and using my body. This all stopped in college, which I think is true for most people, particularly if you're a woman attending a small art school in a city. I believe that as someone prone to depression, a nice gift handed down by not only my mother but my father's side of the family, without this exercise, this pushing my body up hills and for longer distances, high school would have been even more of a nightmare for me. That I went for so many years in my adult life sitting idle, drinking, with no self-awareness that the times that I've been the happiest were when I was the most fit, was something that I am only beginning to reconcile in this, the 45th year of my life.

I had my stomach muscles surgically repaired in 2009. My hernia was fixed at the same time. I could now walk down the street without an unpleasant pushing sensation, as if my intestines were trying to force their way out of my abdomen. I had been drinking a lot, too. The surgery didn't fix that. As soon as I stopped breastfeeding, I started to drink. I waited until the girls' bedtime, then went to the kitchen and made myself the first of many gin and tonics. I drank Plymouth gin, thought Bulldog was rubbish, and was very discriminating about my tonic, usually going with Q or Fever-Tree. My ice cubes needed to be clear - the clearer the better. For the first time in my life I had an amazing refrigerator, a Sub-Zero, and it made me ice that was the perfect shape, and it always knew when it needed to make more. This is what I loved the most, the anticipation of that first drink - the fizz of the tonic, the acid of a fresh lime. The strange, wonderful botanicals of the gin. If I had stopped at half a drink (because I made a strong G&T), I would have been left with that pleasant buzz, the slight numbness to the day, to what would happen tomorrow. This is what I imagine a normal drinker takes away from alcohol, how they know when to stop. But for me, let's get all the pleasantries out of the way and drink until the television starts to talk to you about whatever high calorie dinner you're eating, the loaf of garlic bread paired with the whopping fat content of a Fresh Direct Lasagna. The television was in my head while I ate, and I would think, whoa, it's good I'm eating, I'm pretty hammered!

And where was my partner A. during all this?
The girls were born in 2008. I remember having to go into the hospital for stress tests 2 times a week the last month before the C-section. The TV in the waiting room announced armageddon for everyone's home, everyone's 401K, everyone's business. A, who owns her own company with a partner, was in the heavy-lifting period of launching a new business, the start of what would be two years of around-the-clock work for her. At first she worked from home, in our bedroom, as we had just moved into our new apartment when the girls were 10 days old, but when the kids started getting around, she got her own office, and she would be gone during the day. She was with the girls in the morning, and would always be home by six, an hour before their bedtime. But afterward she very often had to go out. And she had to be away at least one week out of the month.  So my drinking picked up.

When I look back at it now, it's as if every night with my gin and tonic is winter, A is never home, and I am alone with two little girls sleeping in a room 25 feet away from me. I am drinking at my own pace, only thinking about dinner when I'm sure I've had enough to drink. I know it wasn't like this. I know the seasons changed. I know I would go for periods of time without a drink, if only to calm my own head, to prove that I didn't have a drinking problem. But this is what life felt like before I discovered the bicycle.

But.

I've never had a blackout. Never had a DUI. Never went to work drunk. Never drank during the day. 

I've never had the shakes. Never damaged my liver. Never fell down. Never embarrassed myself in public. 

But. 

I delay dinner until I've had just the "right" amount of alcohol. I get angry if you interfere with this very delicate, very private process. I will pick fights with you if you say the wrong thing (or sometimes, if you say anything). I will let both of us go to bed angry. I don't care because I am already passed out. 

I will be kind and patient at night if my children wake and I am drunk. But the next day I will yell at them for not putting on their shoes, for wanting their mother to be close to them, to help them get dressed so I will hug them, kiss them. This will make me irritable. 

I wake in a depression. I wake with guilt, shame. I tell myself that that's it; no more. But it's suddenly eleven o'clock in the morning and the thought of that first nighttime drink pops into my head. And I know that I will do it again. 

I switch from Gin (crazy-making) to Vodka to Bourbon. Then to red wine (but it's so good for you!). I drink a whole bottle on more than one occasion. I try hard cider, but who am I kidding? I drink to get drunk. One drink of anything isn't going to do it, and once I start it's not like I can stop at one. 

But.

I stopped drinking on October 19th.