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We’ve been married for 15 years! This picture is from an overnight we took to the St. James Hotel in Red Wing. What a fun little trip: short and low stakes made it feel like the best parts of travel, the parts where you leave your routine and enjoy the company of the best person you’ve ever met.
Yesterday, we took a quick bike trip across town to one of the Little Free Libraries — Ess on a tag-along bike, only one wheel to it and a rigid attachment to my seat post. The season of drought has partially lifted and the green leaves in the gentle late summer sun and the blue sky… I don’t think there’s room to improve on the lovely weather we had. We looked for bunnies and sang out when we saw them, Ess got harassed by a barking dog at a stoplight, we huffed and puffed up hills… the usual bike stuff.
Last night, there was time enough to go see Eighth Grade with Mykala. Time enough to go home and take the tire off the bike, drive it to the store, and buy its replacement. Time enough to put it on. Time enough to pedal through the dense, warm evening to pick-up Ess from my parent’s. Time enough to visit once I got there. Time enough to pedal us home, singing “This Land Is Your Land” most of the way.
With the recent dusting of snow and the consistently cold temperatures, I think biking season is over. This means I have already taken my last ride with Ess on the front handlebars. It gives a dad watery eyes: the first realization of this, and then typing up the thought now. It’s hard to see something that brought so much joy be taken away by dispassionate, objective time. It makes you feel small, powerless, helpless. Mykala anticipated this day six months ago, and when I wasn’t thinking of taking a bike ride this past summer, she was, and got us out for jaunts I wouldn’t have even thought of. Even Ess helped out: asking to go on rides when I least expected it.
A few days ago, Ess and I were walking through the garage to get the watering cans so she could play her current favorite outdoor game: mashing tiny toy ladybugs and ducks and geese in the dirt so she can rinse them off in the watering can water. She’ll do this for the better part of an hour before losing interest. So anyway, Ess starts conversations on her own. I love her topics:
Now that is one impressive accidental color-coordination. Highly visible, very safe: I approve!
It’s 9:21 in the evening, and since it is nearly the longest day of the year, I can look out our open window and see the green grass and tree leaves in the slowly fading twilight. Dads and Grads — my favorite time of the year. The time when the days are longest and summer still feels like all possibility and nothing spent.
Saturday night, Mykala and I watched the Imitation Game, which meant we were up way past our usual 11pm bedtime. Lying down to sleep afterwards, perhaps due to my brain out of practice at inhabiting the narrative structure of a life not my own, I found myself shocked to realize with crystal-clear certainty that my last bike ride with Ess on the handlebars would happen, and fairly soon. Hot tears sprang to my eyes and as I wiped them away in the dark, I told Mykala what I was thinking. Sharing it seemed to somehow make it worse, give it more power.
The lid of the seventy year old stove creaked reluctantly as I pushed it up and ducked my head under. Dust and the smell of distant eggshells wafted up as I relit the stove with the long reach matches from our landlord Mary Alice. A few years ago, when we woke up to the unpleasant smell for almost a week straight, we had learned the pilots tended to get blown out by gentle breezes. Now, this little piece of knowledge was to get filed in the “no longer useful” category in my brain, along with bits like how to keep the sink and tub drains draining (never use without at least one trap), when to change the screens out for the storm windows (earlier than you think; the days quickly get cold), how to avoid the water hammer (turn the water on more than you think you need), how much to turn down the heat (a Pendleton and a down comforter were musts), how to stay cool when the power went out in the summertime (good luck… meditation?), the trick to shutting the front door (humidity dependent), which outlets dropped cord prongs from them like leaves in fall, and which appliances tripped the breaker if used in concert.
Mykala and I took a 10+ mile bike ride from Prospect Park, down University, across the River on Hennepin and over part of the Cedar Lake trail through the north part of Minneapolis. It was in the mid 70s outside and the sun wasn’t yet setting but was low enough in the sky to turn things nice colors. Target Field was hosting a Twins game. It wasn’t too humid or windy or hilly or buggy. We just sailed along on our wheels.
“So what exactly hurts?” Mykala asked, trying to get at the root of my non-specific complaints.
“Well, the joints in my hands and feet feel really sore… like from a virus.”
I took 400mg ibuprofen, which got me through yesterday evening’s delicious and exciting visits to Marvel and Masu — then, around 8:30pm, I called Nils to confirm our Big Bike Ride™ to Stillwater tomorrow. After that, bad things began to happen.
Home is a five minute bike ride from school. I’ve increased my efficiency in clinic, freeing up time after my morning appointment. These two facts mean I get to come home and see my wife for lunch. I love that a lot.
Though Mykala is away right now, I can sit here at home, on a warm summer afternoon, and enjoy the view onto our tree-lined patio.
We biked the Midtown Greenway today: headed over to Lake Calhoun and enjoyed the shops and biking. On the southwest side of the lake, there was a group of college kids that had set up a giant slip ‘n slide. We stopped and joined the spectators. One lady: “I couldn’t figure out why that girl was covered in soap!”
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