My husband is legally blind and cannot drive a car. His main mode of transportation is his feet. Second, bike.There’s a box on our porch right now (it’s crowding my wicker) and inside is his new Schwinn bike. He’s told me it’s black. That it has a banana seat. Judging by the size and shape of the box, it looks like we’ll have to assemble it, which, depending on the accuracy of the instructions and the relative state of our marriage, will either go really well or really badly.
Right now he rides a black Earth Cruiser with a black metal basket. This is how he gets to his 6:00 a.m. yoga class four days a week, 52 weeks a year. He takes off at 5:30 in the morning for the 15 minute, sometimes 10-degree, often pre-dawn ride and is back in the house, sweaty and centered, before eight.
A few weeks ago he said to me: I wish I had a blog. I would write every day about my bike ride. About how the light is beginning to change now. And about the people I always see.
His yoga class is south of us, and each morning he rides down the driveway and turns right. But he recently started teaching a yoga class at a different studio and on those days he rides down the driveway and turns left.
“It’s a whole different world in that direction,” he says. "Different people walking different dogs. Different runners. Different trash cans being rolled out to different curbs.”
He notices when a tree branch has come down, or when the shadows shift. How each day brings a whole world of uniqueness to the exact same bike ride.
When we’re done assembling the Schwinn, he’ll be riding to yoga much lower to the ground. His ride will change once again.
No matter that we’ve been together for 'round about thirty years, it is never lost on me that it is my blind husband who reminds me to look at how beautiful the sky is. To look and really see.
