Books

Pedaling my tiny two-wheeler in circles around a tree in my urban backyard, I dreamed of a bike made for mud. When the skinny tires got caught in a rut, my 7-year-old mind didn’t understand why a bike couldn’t just ride through it.

From the moment I got my first tricycle as a toddler, I was hooked on bikes. Little did I know, bikes would teach me valuable life lessons. After the tricycle, I grew into a Schwinn Pixie, the one I rode around the tree like a merry-go-round. I soon sprouted into a Schwinn Stingray and then a Schwinn Varsity 10 speed road bike with drop handlebars. Then something terrible happened. In my late teens, I parked my bike in the garage and there it sat for years. I’d moved on to other things until a friend from my ju-jitsu class asked me to go biking with him.

I rolled the bike out of the garage and hosed it down, blowing off the cobwebs, and pumped air into the flat tires. On our first ride, I noticed the gears weren’t shifting, so I brought it to a local bike shop, where I was told it wasn’t worth repairing. The bike shop owner introduced me to a new kind of bike that had come on the market during my hiatus from riding – the mountain bike! I couldn’t believe it! The bike I had always dreamed of had been invented!

There was nothing to question. I immediately plunked down over $800 on the black and neon green speckled Trek 7000. The bike was fully rigid with no shocks whatsoever. As instructed, I let out some air pressure from the tires and headed for the rocky trails of northern New Jersey, along with my friend, who was also pedaling a newly purchased mountain bike.

I believed in that bike. I believed it could do anything, go anywhere, and ride over everything, and so we did! With my feet clamped in toe clips, we tackled the tough terrain of Ringwood State Park on a regular basis, riding up steep inclines and zipping down the other side, kicking up small rocks that pinged against the aluminum frame.  We pedaled through rock gardens and deep muddy puddles the size of small ponds. Covered in mud, there was nothing we couldn’t do, no place we couldn’t go.

I pedaled without fear, confident in my knobby-wheeled steed. Approaching obstacles, I cranked harder, anticipating only success. Bike and body worked in a finely tuned synchronicity. If my first try failed, I eagerly tried again until surmounting the hurdle. As the bike reacted to the terrain, I reacted to the bike to maintain balance. We were a team! This isn’t to say there weren’t mishaps. My body hit the dirt quite a few times. Racing along a leaf-covered trail in the autumn, the concealed ground below went from hard-packed dirt to loose gravel as I rounded a bend. The rear wheel slid out, dropping the bike out from under me. The momentum sent my body over the bars, soaring through the air Superman-style until gravity took over, landing me with a belly flop on the rocks. Dusting myself off, I walked back to my bike lying on its side with the rear wheel still spinning, picked it up, and pedaled on, announcing to my riding partner, “You haven’t been mountain biking until you’ve become part of the mountain”!

Sometimes my expectations defied the natural laws of physics, such as when I tried to ride up the equivalent of a dirt half pipe, created by Mother Nature, herself. From a running start, I was determined to reach the top. My last attempt sent me inches from the summit, where I became the victim of gravity. The bike stalled, flopping on its side. I landed face down alongside. Tightly grasping the frame with one hand, I dug my other hand in the dirt, and slid on my belly back down to the bottom. The friction tore a massive hole in my bike glove, the only causality of the day. Read more

“He came”! He came”! I can still hear my not-so-dainty bare feet thumping, as I ran towards the Christmas tree. Glowing with warm colored lights, glittering tinsel, and sparkling handblown glass ornaments, it was magical! Excited to see the toys below, I dashed into the kitchen to make sure the cookies left on the table for Santa had been eaten. The remains of a bitten cookie and crumbs was all the evidence I needed, confirming that it really was Santa who had placed the gifts beneath the tree.

Poking my head into my parent’s bedroom, I repeated, “He came”! Clarifying, “Santa was here”! I roused them from what certainly must have been a long, uninterrupted, restful Christmas Eve’s sleep. Mom put on her robe as Dad grabbed his camera. The three of us, up shortly before the sun, walked towards the living room, illuminated by the rack of lights atop Dad’s movie camera.

First, I dashed to get my Christmas stocking, hung, not from the mantle, as our Paterson, New Jersey home had no fireplace, but rather from the large key in the cabinet door of the grandfather’s clock. A wintery off-white stocking, adorned with glitter and sequins, was stuffed with little toys, treats, and a candy cane sticking out the top. At the very bottom, nestled in the toe, the very last thing to pull out, sat an orange. Every year there were different toys beneath the tree and different goodies in the stocking, but there was always an orange at the bottom.

I never knew why Santa always put an orange in my stocking, and looking back, I wonder why I never asked. Nonetheless, a Christmas stocking would never be complete without an orange. Only recently did I start investigating the reasons behind this. As it turns out, there are several origins of the Christmas orange.

Traveling back in time to the 4^th century AD, legend has it that a very poor man with three daughters didn’t have enough money for their dowries. Hearing of this, St. Nicholas dropped three round pieces of gold down their chimney, and they landed in the girl’s stockings drying below. The round orange with its goldish hue, came to symbolize the balls of gold given by St. Nicholas.

Fast forwarding to the 1800s, oranges, native to warm climates, were exotic and rare in colder regions. The slow modes of transportation of the era meant oranges came with a hefty price tag. Only the rich could afford this sweet citrus fruit, so gifting an orange was regarded as giving someone a luxury item.

During the Depression and the lean years that followed, people didn’t have money to spend on gifts. Many struggled just to put food on their table and oranges were regarded as an extra special treat. Without the financial ability to put gifts and toys under the tree, an orange, sometimes accompanied by nuts, was placed in a Christmas stocking.

Only now, as an adult, do I understand why my parents, tired from secretly playing Santa, happily watched and filmed me pulling out the orange they had placed in the toe of my Christmas stocking.

Along with an orange, there was one other thing I got every year for Christmas – ice skates! From the first year that I graduated to single blade skates, up until my preteens, there was always a box of new ice skates for my bigger, growing feet under the tree. Tucked in the box was a pair of wool socks – skating socks – to keep my feet warm. Read more

The outside air temperature had already reached 70 degrees at 10 o’clock in the morning. I had to check the calendar twice to convince myself it really was November 1^st. This time of year, I was supposed to be putting on long pants and a windbreaker for a morning bike ride, not shorts and a T-shirt. So, I dug out my summer biking clothes and began leisurely dressing, thinking about the warm, sunny bike ride I was about to embark on.

My pleasant daydream was shattered by a sudden burst of noise. A truckload of subrban lawn warriors had pulled up to the house next door. Despite the summer feel, it was autumn and there were leaves to attack, blow, and eliminate. With heavy leaf blowers strapped to their backs, a couple of warriors climbed a tall ladder to the roof and began blasting the leaves. Down below, an army of men, being showered in fluttering red, orange, and gold foliage, assaulted the land-based leaves with their fume-spewing leaf blowers. One of the troops rode a gas-propelled giant fan – a riding leaf blower – blasting huge mounds of leaves at once. The noise was deafening.

Hurrying outside, I hopped on my bike and pedaled away, hoping to outrun the brain-rattling cacophony of two-stroke engines. Leaf blowers often exceed 100 decibels, similar to a commercial jet taking off, but not quite as loud as the blast of a rocket lift off. The noise diminished as I rode down the street, but when I rounded the corner, I was confronted by another large group of men armed with loud lawn weapons. Accelerating, I left them in my wake, only to be faced with army after leaf blowing army; there was no escaping the noise and choking fumes. I rode for an hour, at times passing land forces so loud that my teeth rattled inside my head. Well, isn’t it worth it – the hours of brain-shaking noise and noxious fumes – to have those manicured, bright green, chemically treated, leafless lawns?

Leaves are essential for a healthy environment. They provide a habitat for ladybugs, fireflies, and other creatures, perpetuate pollination, and provide nutrients for the soil. Instead, suburban homeowners somehow think it’s better to strip the earth of nature’s nutritious, insulating leaf blanket and then add poisonous lawn chemicals to maintain that bright green spring look to their grass …. in November! Little flags are then planted along the property’s perimeter, warning people to keep their children and pets off the chemically laden lawn. Perhaps they should consider Astroturf! Read more

All roads lead to Rome, now a figurative expression, was once quite literal. Beginning around 300 BC, the Roman Empire started constructing a vast network of roads radiating from the great city. During the height of Rome’s reign, there were over 250,000 miles of roads connecting the city to the outreaches of the empire throughout Europe and as far away as western Asia. The Roman roads intertwined throughout the land, forming a web that carried everyday citizens, the military, and political officials to outlying regions, and served as trade routes for the exchange of goods, knowledge, culture, and language.

With the collapse of the Roman Empire, Europe and much of the world fell into a period of stagnation, known as the Dark Ages. Exploration, scientific discovery, and economics fell into decline, as did cultural, artistic, and intellectual achievements. The darkest of this dark period was the Bubonic plague, the global pandemic originating in Asia that entered Europe through shipping ports in Italy. Ravaging Western Eurasia and North Africa, the Bubonic Plaque caused an estimated 75-200 million deaths, wiping out a third of the population between the years 1346 and 1352.

From this darkness, there emerged a great light, a revival of art, literature, language, science, and exploration. This new age, known as the Renaissance, was ushered in by a scholar and poet from a village near Florence, Italy, Francesco Petrarca, more commonly known by his anglicized name, Petrarch. One of the most influential figures during the Renaissance, and one of the greatest artists of all time, was another Florentine, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, or more simply, Michelangelo!

Most famous for his frescoes on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, Michelangelo was also a great sculptor and the creator of the Pietá, depicting the death of Christ, and the statue of David, now residing in Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy. A beloved symbol of Florence, the marble masterpiece is also an icon of the Renaissance. Standing 17 feet tall, it took Michelangelo over 3 years, beginning in 1501, to carve the image of the nude teenage male figure, intended to embody the independent spirit of the Republic of Florence.

Suddenly, in 2023 in America, this great work of one of the world’s most brilliant and revered artists is being labeled as pornography. The Statue of David, as viewed through the eyes of ignorance, is seen as porn, unsuitable for the eyes of children in middle school. The cries of outraged parents resulted in the firing of a school principal, who allowed an art teacher to give a 6^th grade class a lesson on Renaissance art, featuring Michelangelo’s David. Read more

Please keep checking back, as I update this website with new fun and interesting content!

Daughter of Two Worlds: The Face of My Father is available in paperback directly from Holly Leaf Publishing, and in paperback and ebook formats from Amazon.

Nancy Triggiani is a writer whose zest for life and multitude of interests are reflected in her stories and characters.