"I used to try to decide which was the
worst month of the year. In the winter
I would choose February. I had it figured
out that the reason God made February short
a few days was because he knew that by
the time people came to the end of it they
would die if they had to stand one more
blasted day."
Katherine Paterson
Our unusual cold, snowy spell has been followed by an unusual warm spell. It has not quite dispelled the snow that still daintily laces the shady places, defiantly white, where the sun cannot reach. It is definitely ebbing, clenched fists slowly and reluctantly relinquishing dull brown ground. There is a bareness there that will be unrecognizable once spring weaves her magic. I wish I knew for sure that winter was done for this year, but I have heard predictions that winter will defiantly reclaim the land toward the end of the month. I hope they are wrong but it would be quite off for winter to let us off so easily in early February. I have had quite enough of the snow shovel this year and have vowed that by next winter, I will have a snow blower. The weather has always swung wildly, but more so now than ever in memory. Then I grin to myself thinking that in a few months I will be cursing the heat. Dissatisfaction, part of the human condition.
I feel fortunate that I have been able to get out on the bike during the past week for a few rides, including today. But today is dreary and it is still cold with the sun shielding his warmth from not just my body, but my soul. I mind the cold more than I used to, and I mind the wind even more. Age, it seems, has weakened not only my determination, but my tolerance for those things that increase the difficulty of a ride though I still do not mind hills even while I curse them. There is something about the use of my legs and my breath that reminds me I am alive and still strong, relatively speaking. It is not the strength of younger years, but it is still strength, and I rejoice in it.
I used to enjoy the challenge of wind and extreme cold, but not so much any more. Perhaps it is because my winter rides have become almost exclusively exercises in solitude. Those that used to face these roads with me throughout the depths of winter no longer do. Some have quit riding and some have yielded to Zwift. And those that do ride are so much younger and stronger that I would be a burden. Or perhaps it is just because of the passage of time......when there is no longer change, when we no longer change, we are dead. February has been hard regardless since Lloyd passed as it held both Valentine's Day and our anniversary.
But I can say I have enjoyed the short rides this week, most of them in the twenty mile range or a bit more. Despite the cold, the wind has not been too demanding, and it just feels good to be outside and for the road to be passing underneath my wheels. As I climbed Leota Hill earlier this week, I swore to myself that it has gotten slightly steeper and longer over the winter. My breath was ragged and gasping, my speed a mere crawl, but still I ascended. When asked, my legs did not fail me. I worried about cinders causing my tire to flat or to spin out, but thus far it has not happened. I truly detest changing a tire when my fingers are freezing cold. I briefly wondered how the finger I have to manually straighten in the mornings anymore would react to the demand and I am glad I don't find out.
On Saylor, I stopped briefly when I saw ice blocks. I have seen ice fishing before in this area, but never the blocks. They gleamed in the sunshine of the day. They were in front of an Amish house so, while my first thought was an igloo, I realized it is probably for their ice house since the Amish do not use electricity and thus do not have refrigerators. It made me think of my mother and how she told me the children would run behind the ice truck in the summer hoping that the ice man would be kind enough to chip a free piece of ice for them to stick in their cotton dry summer mouths. How spoiled we have become. All my childhood we had a refrigerator, and all my childhood my mother continued to call it the icebox. Sometimes I wonder if the progress has actually made us less satisfied with our lives, perhaps because it yields us time we would not otherwise have. I miss my mother: the sound of her voice, the sound of her laughter, the way she would call my name, the gentleness of her touch, the very smell of her. These, I thought, are the important things in life, but too often we do not cherish them enough only realizing their importance and their rareness when they are gone.
I wish I had been a better daughter, closer to what she wanted me to be. Did she ever understand my love of the bicycle? How I cried when we left our home to live in England for year and they sold my sister's bike, the bike I had inherited and learned to ride on. I know she later came to hate my cycling, but time has made me realize how interlaced that hatred was with fear for my safety. And how could she have understood, she who was raised in poverty and never owned a bicycle. Our personalities and likes so different, and yet I swear we were cut from the same cloth. Sometimes I see her in myself. At one time it would have made me turn away, but now I embrace it. Yes, I miss my mother and the others I have loved that have died.
My thoughts were interrupted by two deer that stand, uncertain, timidly gazing at me from the middle of the road. They decided there is safety in flight, and they gracefully bound and melt into the forest, survivors of another hunting season. I noticed squirrels scampering and one that did not scamper quickly from an automobile demanding passage thus paying the ultimate price. I assume they are hungrier than normal because of the snow making dinner harder to come by. But I do not know. I hate thinking that I will die with so much left that I do not know or understand or have never seen.
All these are thoughts I have as I wind my way down roads that are so familiar I could almost ride them blindfolded. Each day I head a different direction, sometimes still finding my way impeded by ice patches where the trees have shielded the snow from the sun. Nowadays, I change course. It is just good to be outside, on a bicycle, and to know that it looks as if God will probably grant me another spring, another chance to watch the earth give birth and paint the roadsides with color and new life. Would I chose February as the worst month? I don't know. In February Christmas with its sparkle has passed and the winter seems to drag on as if it will never end. And we no longer go to Hell Week so there is not that to look forward to. Would we, I wonder, appreciate spring as much if there were no February?
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