Natalie Flowers
twenty-seven stories

A collection of essays from Texas writer Natalie Flowers.  Wry, poignant, always thought provoking, Natalie has led an intricate and itinerant life, and lived to tell about it.  Here are excerpt from two of her stories.

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excerpt from The Bicycle Story

...When I was eight years old, my father purchased a blue bike with a white banana seat for my Christmas present. My mother, not to be outdone, had also gotten a bicycle for me to use at our apartment, and its beauty far surpassed that of the blue bike. It was metallic green with a shiny metallic banana seat, and I kept it locked underneath the stairs at our apartment when I wasn’t peddling around our apartment complex on the curving pebbled sidewalks.

     ...My passion for bicycles continued into my teenage years, where I spent every cent I didn’t spend on art supplies on bicycles. I babysat all summer the year I turned thirteen, and at the end of the season I bought a blue Schwinn Suburban that I rode until my taste became more sophisticated. Then I bought a Motobecane. At seventeen, I had a special touring bike built. It was so light that you could pick it up with one finger, and I took it with me to college and rode it almost the entire time. Back then I didn’t worry about bicycle theft as much as I seem to now. It takes about three minutes to steal a bicycle, and if it’s not locked to something, the thief can virtually disappear with no chance of it ever being found.

     Since I was stubborn following my graduation from college, and poor because I had an English degree, I ended up riding a bicycle for a very long time. Twelve years, in fact. And during that time my dependence on trusty metallic steeds shifted a bit. I tried mountain bikes, but they were too heavy. Even though you were supposed to be able to drive over a railroad track on them and not really feel the impact, the mere weight of the bike made it impossible for me to ride without becoming exhausted. While living in Santa Fe, I rode a mountain bike to work almost every day, and each day I would arrive winded and wheezing. My boss kept asking me when I was going to be a seasoned mountain biker, and the answer never came. We lived at 7,000 feet. I had asthma.

     At the age of 31, I finally got my own apartment after living with other people for eight years. I had three jobs, and I rode to two of them on my bicycle. For awhile it was a black Diamondback, which I sold so that I could buy a sleek brown Fuji 21 speed. The Fuji, like most things created in Japan, was fabulous. It was fast, light, and beautiful. I rode it everywhere. I felt invincible.

     One morning I woke up really early, hopped on the Fuji, and began riding around the neighborhood searching for yard sales. I lived in a fashionable area, where the selections at the sales rivaled those of major department stores for much less money. It was 7:30 in the morning, too early for any sale to be open. I was fortunate to find a sale in a woman’s yard four blocks away, and delighted when the woman told me that it would be okay for me to look, even though she wasn’t officially open. I left the bike flat in the hilly, grassy yard, and I was there for an hour and a half, gathering up tablecloth and napkin sets, sheer dance pants, shirts, and all kinds of stuff. The woman remarked after talking to me how wonderful my energy was, and indicated that she liked me. She had a friend who was helping her inside the house, which was where we went to pay. I paid a nominal price for my pile and the friend moved on to collect someone else’s money. As I was preparing to leave the room, I looked up on a rack above my head and saw a root beer colored short silk kimono. It was more money than I wanted to spend, and no one was watching, so I pulled it off of its hanger and discreetly added it to my pile.

     I was waiting for a twinge of guilt to surface, but fate had other things in store for me. I went outside to get on my bicycle and it wasn’t there. I shouted something to the crowd, and someone told me that someone had just loaded the brown bicycle into a Suburban and had driven away. Another person from the sale offered to take me in their car to see if we could chase down the thieves, and we took off on a short and uneventful attempt to get back my only means of transportation. Eventually that kind person dropped me off at my apartment, and I hauled my garage sale items up the stairs. I hung everything up in the closet, including the kimono, and began searching throughout my network of friends for a bicycle to borrow. I still had to get to my jobs tomorrow...

excerpt from Pop-Up

     I live in a pop-up camper. The first time it rained outside it sounded like thousands of tiny peas perpetually showering me from above. Then it sounded like frying bacon. It’s like a homeopathic aural remedy for home.

     This morning I woke up, after dreaming that I was married to David Letterman, and made some phone calls on the portable phone. My friends seemed surprised to hear me speaking from what sounded like the inside of a rainmaker.

     What I like about it is what I also like about Boy Scout tents from the forties – those green canvas Taj Mahal palaces that have real zip-out windows with screens, so you can lie in your bed in the morning and look out at living canvas: real trees that blow in the wind, flowers if you’re lucky (and I am), and sky.
When you live inside walls, even with windows, you miss things. The flutter of bird wings. Conversations between flocks. The sounds of chickens. The air is an exquisite mystical laboratory for music – whistles, chirps, and caws, most if it missed when you are whirring past in an enclosed vehicle or perched in a sterile multistory office...

     ...My current store of possessions fills half of a medium-sized station wagon, and I give things away almost daily. Somehow, in a rectangular camper which is space-wise much larger than TWO closets, I manage to cover almost every surface with some form of debris: antibiotics I will never feed to my cat, bottles of oils, books, piles of unfinished paperwork, knives, glass vases, a soap dish I just had to have, a 40-load box of detergent, a file box, backpack, travel clock, guitar, CDs, squirt bottles, rubbing alcohol, wads of clothing, stacks of collected artwork, and a rosemary plant that came with the camper.

...However minimal the pile becomes, it is still visually too much for me. I dreamt several months ago that I had my very own house. It had three white bedrooms, a bathroom with a real tub in it, a large living, dining, and kitchen area, and no furniture.

     In the dream I remember thinking how wonderful it was that I finally had a healing room, a writing room, and my own room in addition to the rest of the house and it was completely spacious. I loved it! Then I woke up, remembering that dreams are often reminders of how we want things to be or of how they have been. Sometimes they foretell the future and even surprise us by coming true.

     My friends like to tell me what they are going to do when they win the lottery. I think to myself that I have already won. What more can I ask for in the world? I don’t have to answer to anybody, I can go wherever I want and stay as long or as little as I feel appropriate...