Bicycle Riding

They say, once you learn, you never forget how to ride a bicycle. They also say an elephant never forgets. Yesterday was my first day back to work after seven weeks off for surgery and recovery. I have been off for extended periods of time in the past, but never for this long at one stretch.  And I am a bit surprised to say, in some respects it was like I was only gone for a weekend.  For the most part the daily tasks fell into place. I know I was slower in executing the normal chores and I did have to pause and think about some of what I was doing, but ...  old elephants never forget how to ride bicycles.  Kind of funny. I feel like an adult returning to his childhood home because the whole place seems smaller, more compact than I remember. I am sure after a cold winter of shoveling snow the plant will actually grow in this respect, but the change in perspective is interesting.

The other night I was doing the dog chores by headlamp. The evening was clear and a light frost was falling in the still air, individual faceted crystals shining back at me while the last of the twilight sky changed from salmon, to green, to purple, to the dark indigo of a winter night.  We have two dogs, Sadee, the spaniel and Anna, the shepard.  They are both dogs, yet in the light from the headlamp their eyes reflect different colors:  Sadee'e eyes shine like fiery little pumpkins; Anna's, like cool green summer foxfire. Both of them dogs, but with different eyes.

Karen and I have been talking about how our life has changed; how we have changed. Nothing is ever the same, we know that, but letting go of expectations is difficult. Individually Karen and I mourn  the losses we have experienced and dread the arrival of even more. What we are willing to settle for depends on our point of view, our perspective; our memories of the past and our projections for the future. We are both human, we have both been through the same thing. Yet our eyes reflect different colors when the light of reality shines on us.

This is still a long portage and we go about our life together, often relying on habit to see us through, guiding us around obstacles without conscious thought. We hope, we always hope for a good outcome, for never having to deal with cancer ever again, for even just a few parts of the life we used to know, to be there when we reach the end.  We want a new and larger life than the one we are living now. We want to forget how to ride this bicycle.

Peace,
Mike