I was busy all last week being grateful (and, trust me, I have much to be grateful for) that I didn’t write a post during the Thanksgiving break.
But me is back! With not much to write about. I’m thinking of letting myself go “a la Freud,” letting my ideas flow as in free association mode.
The other day I was thinking about the several decades of my life and how my past gets mistier year after year. I thought this when I saw a child joyfully riding his bicycle and I thought to myself, “Hey I used to know how to do that!”
I remember the last two times I’ve been on a bicycle. The last one is a bit embarrassing because I fell off the my brand new shiny blue bike (a wonderful birthday present from my husband’s son Octavio) and I was semi-drunk. I say “semi-drunk” because I achingly remember every detail of the incident, the burn on my calf, etc, so we shall say that I was somewhat tipsy. The fall happened right before I even attempted to try pedaling. I didn’t think I could fall, trusting as I was on that notion that you can’t forget something as easy as that, that it would be exactly like “riding a bike”!
But long before that in 1989 it turns I was in Toronto with my first husband, our friend Beatriz and her chef boyfriend, a French-Canadian that we shall call Pierre. That day Pierre had cooked for us. I remember how amazed I was that a salad could be so utterly delicious. Pierre said that the secret is always in the dressing, and that the one we had enjoyed was his own creation. Well, Pierre, it was exquisite!
The four us ended on an island whose name I do not remember, nor can I recall how or why we went there. All I remember is that the four of us were riding bikes. And it was exactly as the saying goes, easy “like riding a bike.” The day was hot but beautiful and oh my gosh, all that greenery. I remember picking up some pebbles from the beach and bringing them to San Antonio with me and putting them as little decorative remembrance pieces on the window sill of our apartment to remind myself of that that sunny and falsely carefree day. The little rocks have long been lost, but the memory has not been misplaced (thank goodness).
Hey! There was another bike ride before the embarrassing fall and after Toronto. Raúl, my husband, is living in Houston. Our friend Rafael and I are visiting him fo the weekend and we decide to go to Galveston. We wanted to see the sea (ha, “see the sea!” get it?). Before that I had only been to the beach once in Mexico, in the beautiful state of Colima. Raúl and Rafa are both poets and you can imagine the words and descriptions they had to share about the ocean. So there we are, walking among tourists and Raúl and I have a mega-fight and he says rejects the idea of renting a bike that can be pedaled by four, but Rafa and I rent it anyway and we pedal on the beach. I remember him encouraging me to pedal beyond my own astrength. I gave my best effort, but it was a lot of sweaty work. Meanwhile Raúl was drawing a heart on the sand with a message for me in its center: “I love you” (te amo). Awww!
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