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. 

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.

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.