Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

Three years ago this morning, the phone rang just after 4 am, and I knew it was the call we'd been waiting for. The one telling us Mom had slipped away, leaving this world for the next. I remember sitting on the edge of the bed, talking with my sister and being sad but at the same time feeling some solace in knowing Mom was no longer suffering. I still get sad at times when I think about her, the sadness more over how her body became her enemy during the last 20 or so years of her life. I hope my body and I don't ever become enemies, and it is because of this hope that I decided how I was going to spend my day today, in memory of her. Initially I thought about getting a sky lantern and writing a message on it to send up to the heavens. Then I thought about getting a floating lantern to send out onto the lake. Each of those ideas, though, just weren't dazzling me, even when I had both in the cart and was ready to hit the Buy button. Since the dazzle factor was nonexistent,...

The wind blew out of the north this morning as I rode to work. Smack into my face for most of the three miles. I thought what a great ride home I'd have this afternoon, with the wind at my back. The fickle Illinois wind, though, had other plans. When I walked out to my bike after work, I looked up at the wind turbine to see from which direction the wind was blowing. Southeast. Smack into my face for nearly the entire three miles home. The upside was the temperature had risen from the 7 degrees of this morning (real feel of -10 degrees) to 22 degrees (real feel of 12 degrees). At least the ride home was warmer. Another upside to my day was the response a student offered to my essay, the one I'd written over break to share with my colleagues at our beginning of the semester meeting. I shared my work with my students to show them how I enter into a writing project and how I weave in primary as well as secondary sources. During class, I noticed many of the students reading the es...

During the ride for BTUSFMS, we stopped in Charlottesville, VA for an appearance at the James Q. Miller Multiple Sclerosis Clinic. While there, several individuals living with MS spoke, and several of the cyclists were interviewed about taking part in BTUSFMS. I was approached about being interviewed, but I declined. At that time, I couldn't maintain my composure when talking about why I was cycling. Mom's death still hurt, and thinking about how she suffered the last few weeks of her life brought on the tears. Today I presented my experience with BTUSFMS to a fairly large group. When I began, I explained why I decided to do the ride--for my mom--and I felt so strong, so confident when I explained how she had been diagnosed with MS, how she eventually lost her mobility, and how MS has no cure. While a twinge of sadness grabbed my heart when I thought about how she lost the battle to MS, I was able to continue on, showing the group what an amazing summer I had cycling across t...

Recently, because of my hyper-enthusiasm over cycling--for commuting, for fitness, for bliss--I was searching for other cycling blogs written by women. When I typed in "cycling blogs by women," one of the first hits on the results list was "Women's Bike Blogs: The List." Doing the ol' purse the lips in the "yeah, there's probably two, maybe three blogs listed," I clicked on the link. What I thought next was straight out of A Christmas Story --"and the lamp (in my case, list) blazed forth in unparalled glory." The next thought was, "Great. Now I'm going to fritter away time going through this list and reading all these blogs." I consoled myself by justifying that reading all the blogs was a good, healthy activity, almost akin to being on the bike itself. So I started reading. "The List" was compiled by Barb Chamberlain , author of Bike Style: The Quest for the Intersection of Style and Comfort, and I for one ...

The day of Mom's funeral service, after we all returned to my sister's house and after we had spent a few hours eating, playing bid euchre, and reminiscing, my dad took me aside, saying he wanted me to go over to his place. I followed him into the little cabin he had built very lovingly from the ground up, wondering what was on his mind. In the bedroom, he placed Mom's jewelry box on the bed's puffy comforter and said, "Take whatever you want. Your mom wanted you to have anything you like." For a second I stood and looked at the family photos Mom had slipped into the frames built into the jewelry box lid, one for each of her children. The smiles captured during special moments eased a bit of my sadness and I started picking up the different pieces. I knew several of the broaches had been my grandmother's, so I selected those. A couple of the bracelets came from Mom's early years following the diagnosis of the MS, when she would sit on the couch, watc...