It was late afternoon on an average sort of summer day. Even before we hit the small knoll into Plainfield I could tell something was off. It’s hard to hide on a tandem. Today she was unusually quiet. Equally telling: there was a slight lag in her upstroke and a reluctance to catch the higher cadences I offered. By the time we attacked the knoll I had resolved to ask what’s going on, but I waited until we cleared the short hill on the other side of town. Past that climb we had a few miles of gentle rollers.
After breathing stabilized and as I tightened the gears, I called back, “What’re you thinking about back there?”
There was usually a pause. I didn’t mind waiting. My eyes were on the road. Green hills rose above and fields sparkled in the river valley on either side of us.
“I am worried about Ariel.”
Our children were a frequent topic when we were in HAHA time. Ariel, our oldest daughter, was into the first phases of adolescence and confronting all of the related risks and pressures. The influences of one friend in particular worried us. While Daysi and I found common ground in the fears we shared, our instincts about how to help ran in opposite directions. My wife usually wanted to clamp down while I was inclined to step back and open up. The more worried we were, the more tightly we held onto our preferences.
She talked through a recent incident. I asked some questions. We were already accustomed to the deep privacy of our rides. All that we needed was that specific glance at the dinner table for a subject to be taken out of circulation and hung beside the helmets and gloves. By the time I broached the subject we were a mere 25 minutes into a 2 hour ride. There was nothing but sweat and heavy breathing on the agenda for the next 90 minutes. Ariel was not standing behind us waiting for an answer about a sleep over. Her little sister wasn’t lingering in the doorway. I didn’t need to get my point across so that I could get back to a business call or out to the garden, or, or, or –– I wasn’t going anywhere that took me more than 24 inches from my wife.
This day I asked a couple of more questions. In part, I was stalling. We were about to turn onto the biggest climb of the ride. By habit, we stopped at the flower garden just after the turn but before the hill. The stop itself required a change in topic. I spoke up to confirm that we would be stopping, and that I would loosen up the gears. The garden had a variety of lily that wasn't doing well at our place and they were mixed with columbines in a combination we had never considered. The next 40 minutes were completely consumed in the exertion of the climb, and for 15 minutes after that only whistling wind filled our ears.
By the time we hit the next section of flats all of my “Yeah, but…” responses had burned away. I had spent the last hour sitting with the fears I hold. They had been ground through 3 miles of dirt road climbing, dragged alongside the pristine pond where we catch a quick break, brought over the unimpressive crest of the ridge and buried beneath the hunt for potholes and rocks that is part of any descent. In every instant of that hour my wife is present. I feel her in my quads. I hear the labor of her breathing. Of course, we talked across that hour but it was in the clipped transactions of effort and beauty. “Rough spot, up here,” I huffed. “Look at the heron,” she said. “Water lilies are going by,” I noted. “Lots of cars at the store today,” she observed.
Maybe enough had been said about our daughter’s situation for this day. Perhaps it was enough for Daysi to share what she had seen and explain what it meant to her. There was no lag in her cadence. Her silences now felt more a part of the ride instead of apart from it. Let this thing be. My fear was a shade of darkness that has a hard time resisting the heat, salt, and fluffy clouds of a summer afternoon. Like so much of what was going on in our lives, the bigger issue ran deeper than any one event. With a bit of reflection it was harder to see the urgency and easier to see the deeper pattern of our daughter’s growth.
I chose to speak. Of course, I had some lingering suggestions about what we should do but those mattered less than the emotion behind them. My deeper anxiety was that the world would try to break my child before she was equipped to defend herself and the realization that this was already happening in ways that I couldn’t even see much less understand. I was pinned in the hope that she would figure out how to carve her path through it all, and the absolute certainty that neither Daysi nor I could save her from this struggle. The best we could do was to offer help, and the best help we could come up with was some mix of guardrails and the open road.
We had two more significant hills still on the ride, and one delicious paved descent where we tucked into all the velocity gravity could give us. In each we gave our voices over to the ride –– oxygen relinquished to lungs and legs. We fought: gravity, pain, doubt. If only for this instant, in this tiny, arbitrary, and self-inflicted trial we triumphed –– together.
We ended the ride with no clearer action plan than we had started. HAHA time had a funny way of eroding action plans, and yet the best options were always a bit clearer. Understanding was written across the landscape. We had just spent two hours in sync. Foot to foot. Thigh to thigh. We both said our piece. The details would work themselves out later.
buy me a coffee
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