![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amidthestarsI'm back at my parents' house this weekend. I like it out here.
I never thought I'd say that. My parents have changed so much in the last few years, and I've been away for so long, and I really just enjoy them now, in all their strange, cute glory. I watch them half delighted and half amazed, thinking, "Who are you, and how did you get this way?" They were not always this way.
Lately, too, I'm not very good at being alone for long stretches. Evenings are okay, but weekends are hard. Mostly I love living alone, but I've had a lot of solitude in recent years, and now I'm not always comfortable there. It helps to be near people.
And, I'm discovering, it helps to bike. Last weekend, my mom - who has been a very enthusiastic distance road cyclist for years now - took me on a ride with her for the first time, and this morning we did it again: 50 km of national parkway before 11 a.m. I loved it. It was... the word I keep thinking of is "mercy." It was a mercy to be so physically consumed by something. It was a mercy to be exhausting myself, watching birds and butterflies emerge from the grass by the side of the road, mentally naming wildflowers as I passed them but thinking of little else. To have my music turned up loud, to coast down a hill with The Reindeer Section making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was all such a welcome, necessary, longed-for relief.
Now, I can hardly keep my eyes open. When I close them, I hear my mom laugh, and it's beautiful.
I never thought I'd say that. My parents have changed so much in the last few years, and I've been away for so long, and I really just enjoy them now, in all their strange, cute glory. I watch them half delighted and half amazed, thinking, "Who are you, and how did you get this way?" They were not always this way.
Lately, too, I'm not very good at being alone for long stretches. Evenings are okay, but weekends are hard. Mostly I love living alone, but I've had a lot of solitude in recent years, and now I'm not always comfortable there. It helps to be near people.
And, I'm discovering, it helps to bike. Last weekend, my mom - who has been a very enthusiastic distance road cyclist for years now - took me on a ride with her for the first time, and this morning we did it again: 50 km of national parkway before 11 a.m. I loved it. It was... the word I keep thinking of is "mercy." It was a mercy to be so physically consumed by something. It was a mercy to be exhausting myself, watching birds and butterflies emerge from the grass by the side of the road, mentally naming wildflowers as I passed them but thinking of little else. To have my music turned up loud, to coast down a hill with The Reindeer Section making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was all such a welcome, necessary, longed-for relief.
Now, I can hardly keep my eyes open. When I close them, I hear my mom laugh, and it's beautiful.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-09 10:52 pm (UTC)That bike ride sounds so perfect. I miss the long morning bike rides I used to have in the city. I wish the roads were friendlier here. Also REINDEER SECTION. Yep--it all sounds perfect.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-11 05:17 am (UTC)The biking was pretty fantastic. Now that I know what it feels like, I don't want to stop. I might very well go home every weekend until it snows, just to keep riding.