My Papi Had a Motorcycle: Parte Cuatro
The Last Part
If you read the author’s note in the back of My Papi Has a Motorcycle you know that the book is based on a memory from my childhood. In the memory, I am probably four or five. It was the 80s so we didn’t wear helmets and drinking and driving was still legal in over 20 states. California had just started imposing stricter punishments against that crime. My dad would’ve been 25 or 26 and he’d come home smelling like a hard day of work. He drank Budweiser when I was a kid. I remember the red and white can in his hands when I’d ask him to please put it down. I’ve always thought it was funny how the Mexicans around me drank American beer but the Americans were always looking for the Mexican imports. The smell of beer is something I don’t remember, though my mom does. But that is not my memory, that is hers, so it doesn’t matter for this story.
During editing process of the book Zeke would ask me a lot of questions. Unlike many picture book author and illustrator relationships, we talk the whole time we’re working on a project. It is a true collaboration. One of the things that Zeke asked me, that I use as a compass when I am writing about memories, was, “Is it serving the memory or is it serving the story?”
The story about that memory is what is important to me now. We each hold on to different things, my mom and I. What I hold on to in the pages of the book is the love between a daughter and her father. The feeling of love and freedom when I’d sit on the back of a bright blue motorcycle holding on tight to my father. Both of us happy to be there with the other. I don’t remember fear, I remember safety. I remember love.
*****
For the Harley-Davidson exhibit I helped interview several families that ride together in Southern California. I put a call out on my Instagram and the folks that responded drove out to Riverside Studios where the Harley-Davidson team had set up. They’d flown in from Milwaukee only to be greeted by the hot hands of the Inland Empire in August. The room was hot and sweaty because the a/c was left off; too much noise for the cameras. The folks behind the cameras were the incredible duo from Brave New Pictures, Dave and Kathy Monk.
We had some prepared questions that we asked everyone, “How long have you been riding? What got you into riding? Where’s your favorite place to ride?” But during the course of the interviews there was more to ask.
There was a family who’d I met at the Latino Comics Expo, the little girl is a fan of my work and that is how we initially connected. The father an officer who rides and the mom who used to ride while pregnant but who doesn’t ride anymore. My friend from high school who rides a sports bike with her twin daughters up and down the coast. Her daughters so visibly proud of their mom and her resilience. The dad who rides with his sons and daughter, who’s part of a group that goes out to help his community as part of his ministry. The 12 year old girl who not only rides but builds motorcycles with her dad, and on her own. And of course, I got to interview my dad.
He and my mom showed up, early as is their M.O. I don’t think they’ve shown up late to a thing in their life. My dad was nervous. I felt like a bad daughter because up until that point I didn’t realize that my dad gets anxious around people.
“Estas bien, apa? Tienes nervios?” I ask him.
“Poquito. Pero dije, tengo que ir para ayudar a mija.”
That is my dad.
He was fidgeting and it became more apparent to me when he sat in front of that camera.
I asked him about things I already knew, where he learned to ride (on el rancho in Sinaloa) and if motorcycles were a part of his family (they are—all my cousins and aunts and uncles ride). Then I asked him a question that felt innocuous, “Why would you ride with me?”
“Por que era algo que te hacia feliz y me gustaba que estuvieras feliz.”
Because it made me happy and he liked doing something that made me happy.
It was hard to get back on track after that. His response was unexpected and made me cry. Like I said, my dad doesn’t usually say I love you, and this was a lot. And like I’ve said, my relationship with my dad has not been easy. There have been moments in my life where I questioned if he loved me. Where I’d wonder, if he loves me why does he chose drugs over his kids? Now, as an adult, I know that drug addiction is a disease, it is something that grabs a hold of a person and the person grabs back for dear life. But to hear my dad say that he wanted me to be happy, the response so quick, and so matter of fact, was something I hadn’t considered.
*****
I wasn’t sure what the exhibit would look like but when I got the photos, I couldn’t be happier.
Zeke’s art work setting the tone for the interviews and photos of the families we had the privilege of interviewing. All from Southern California and all brown, not exactly what people think of when you say “bikers.” I love that about this exhibit. I love that families got to share their stories and joy of riding. Each family so different from each other but still gravitating towards riding for the same reasons, it seemed. In the interviews the same words kept popping up, despite age or gender: freedom, free, wind. Their voice would change, especially with the adults, a smile would appear as they tried to in words describe the feeling of riding and the world falling away, and only being left with the road and wind coming at you. I think it’s something that a lot of us look for in our daily life, the act of being present, of being so in the moment that you see and hear and smell everything around you and under you. On the bike, the bikers explained, there is no room for distraction because it is your life and the life of others on the line.
I live too many states away to have already seen the exhibit but I can’t wait to be able to. It’s still so strange to accept that David Kreidler read our book and felt so much that it needed to be an exhibit that he reached out and it happened. That in Milwaukee, at the Harley-Davidson Museum, where hundreds of thousands of people visit each year, Zeke’s illustrations, the ones he made from the photos and videos of Corona I sent, the ones he colored using the palette of our respective southwest sunsets, the ones that have made me tear up, line the walls and that there is a photo of me and my dad introducing visitors to the exhibit; me in no-makeup and in overalls because I had assumed that I wouldn’t be in front of the camera, and my dad in a short sleeved button up, as fancy as he gets nowadays, standing side by side, each of us proud of the other.