On Thursday night, I left my very part-time job exhausted. Eva had asked me to come pick her up at her father’s so he wouldn’t have to leave home again. I made a wrong turn on the drive I’ve made 1,000 times– and almost got lost.
I wasn’t wearing my good glasses. I didn’t have my readers and the perscription was a couple years older than my current one, but they were the glasses that best matched my outfit and I didn’t expect to be driving outside of my normal routine.
And then I reached the hill at the intersection 13th, West Lafayette Street and Bushkill Drive.
I hit the curb at this intersection fairly often; I think a lot of people do. Knock on wood– it’s the only thing I usually hit.
I last hit the curb in September 2024, causing a bad flat. This was about two days after I drove by myself from Atlanta home in one day, 13 hours! Without incident.
I couldn’t have been going that fast because I’m fairly certain I had stopped at the light. But somehow I not only hit the curb, I think I drove over it.
The tire pretty much exploded.
I pulled onto the side of the road and texted my daughter to contact AAA. She and her father came and Eva attempted to change the tire herself, and she got all the nuts off. But she didn’t have a good enough jack for a car parked on ice on a hill. And she didn’t chock the wheels.
So after the car almost rolled over her arm, we waited for AAA.
Eva took the car to Mavis the next day and as we knew, the tire was shot. But we… no, I mean I… bent the wheel rim.
I called the Volkswagen dealership and they said it would take 4 days to get the part. And I thought to myself, I have a 2015 Jetta. There’s got to be a million of them in junkyards with perfectly good wheels.
That was my dad’s voice.
So Eva called the Hubcap store, and an hour later we found ourselves in West Easton in their industrial park facing a perimeter-guarding goose and an ominous gate.
If you look at the photo, there’s a small triangular roof behind the garages. That’s where we needed to go.
And the building had a sign up at the crown of the roof but not on the door.
And when we walked in, they had our Jetta wheel rim on the floor. It was $175. I had $100 cash in my wallet that I intended to take to the bank and put the other $75 on my Amex.
And then Eva went to Mavis and made an appointment to get the wheel mounted the next day.
And then we had a snowstorm. Which Eva handled like a champ with our crappy spare tire
Eva returned to Mavis the next day and two tires (another tire had a bubble) and $415 later we had all four tires again.
Now it’s almost midnight on Monday, on the day by dad died four years ago, and I find myself wanting to tell him so badly:
You didn’t even have to tell me and I found a wheel rim for my car.
And my illustrator Joseph Swarctz of the Echo City Capers series drew me this “sexy Angel” for the conference coming in the fall. I think she’s fantastic. He asked me, over lattes at Panera because we were being fancy at our business meeting because it was my birthday, if I felt any different.
I had mentioned that as I get older, I suddenly realized how old everything else around me has gotten. Like the used car I bought in 2019, it’s almost ten years old now. And don’t even get me started on The Teenager– she’s going to not be a teenager anymore next month.
The mood (and the drama?)
I expected my birthday to be a catch-up-on-work day. I had hoped my birthday would be such. And I hoped that would distract me from the fact that since my father passed away, my family no longer talks to me. My mother sent me a passive-aggressive birthday card last week and my stepmother, who shares my birthday, made it clear that she does not want me in her life, first by ghosting me for more than a year and then by calling me up in February and listing everything I’ve done that she disapproved of during our 30-year-relationship.
Both my mother and my stepmother have experienced a lot of loss in the last few years, so I’m going to remember that. This isn’t the place to talk about family history, trauma, and the list of all the terrible things that can or did happen to people. We all live, we all love the best we can, and we all make mistakes. I think that’s part of why my dad meant so much to me– he understood that.
My dad
My dad was an extremely imperfect person, and now that I reflect upon it, he would make the most amazing fiction character. He was only five-feet tall and wore black motorcycle boots, jeans and Harley-Davidson t-shirts. He had tattoos, some of which honored the important people in his life. He was an alcoholic, and when I was a kid, he drank a lot. And sometimes that led to violence between him and my mother. Violence that I witnessed.
He also could fix anything. He had this sharp, strategic mind that could solve puzzles. He liked the Pittsburgh Steelers and would play Uno with me as he laid on the couch and watched Sunday night football. Which, as a parent now, I see is the easiest way possible to spend time with a child and still do what you want to do. For a while, I even collected football cards to share something, other than Uno, with my dad.
My dad would always have friends around with motorcycles or cars that needed fixing. They would arrange trades or bring gifts, which might have been because he wouldn’t take money.
I could tell stories forever about my dad, but the point is, that it always seemed like he gave people the benefit of the doubt, even when it was clear they were a mess, and I think that’s because he understood that we all have imperfections and some of his, he couldn’t fix. He could changed his behavior in a lot of ways, but sometimes those imperfections still hold us back.
So, it’s my birthday. And the only relatives who contact me do so on Facebook– and I have one cousin who posts this fabulous picture of us kids by my grandmother’s pool. I am between my cousins in the middle of the back row.
But for someone who did not expect or intend much birthday celebrating, it was a chaotic one and I have a feeling it might all extend into next week.
The PreGame
On Saturday, I presented a workshop to the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group. So, some of last week I “lost” in preparation for this event, which went fabulously, though I spoke too fast and squeezed what should have been two presentations into one. I thought I could use Sunday to recoup some lost client time.
How wrong I was.
I started with a Substack newsletter for Parisian Phoenix Publishing. You can read that here. I caught up on some email and watched a replay of a webinar I missed when I went up to the Times-News on Thursday. Then, it was time to go to Barnes & Noble in the Southmont Shopping Center where Joe was selling a LOT of books. It was one of our best days there ever for Echo City Capers.
And when I got home, I thought, now I can focus on some ghostwriting for my mafia novel client.
And then the Teenager approached. “Hey, Mom. I’m going down to groom [my friend and fellow author Tiffani Burnett-Velez’s] dog. You’re coming, right?”
Well, five-plus hours later I came home with a full belly and a copy of Tiff’s first novel because we traded– her first, for my fourth. And a cookie.
The family even sacrificed a cherry pie they had purchased for themselves to celebrate my birthday. And Tiff and I talked about neurologists longer than we probably should have. Because mine is the best one ever.
And during the drive home, the Teenager mentions that she has time on my actual birthday if I want to have a little adventure in the afternoon. So, I send her a list of ideas.
My birthday
The Teenager was definitely confused and perhaps disappointed by my final choice of Palmerton, Pa., for our outing. But I have a strange soft spot in my heart for that town and after my trip to Lehighton earlier in the week it felt like an easy choice.
Our first stop was the Country Harvest grocery store because according to Google maps they had doughnuts and a coffee bar inside. And unexpectedly, or perhaps very expectedly, The Teenager and I found lots of fun items in there. Including the iced teas we both had in school, and varieties of cat food that The Teenager’s finicky cat might eat. And for some reason The Teenager wanted puffed rice, and we picked desserts from the cooler and I bought a copy of the Times-News.
Then we walked down the main drag to go have a quick slice of pizza. Imagine our surprise when we discovered an amazing taco pizza, which we chased with a walk past the park and a visit to the public library so I could use the bathroom and enjoy the beautiful architecture.
The Teenager mentioned that she recognized the town and she felt like it was a place she had visited with my father on the motorcycle. That made sense, I told her, because my dad loved to take the motorcycle along the Lehigh River and through the picturesque hills and valleys of the region. So to celebrate him, we spent some time with the crane machine, another of my dad’s favorite activities.
I think what made the day special was that all we did was walk, talk and enjoy the scenery. Toss in some desserts and a good slice of pizza and what more could I ask… well, and it turns out we also had the presence of my dad.
Angel Ackerman 