Going Home

Today is the day that we go back to Canada and our summer in France will be over. My mother got up very early to pack. I can hear her banging around in the kitchen and I am not sure what she is thinking. She could be chasing spiders. She could be washing somebody's breakfast dishes. She could be cooking, although this is unlikely since we are soon going to be leaving the villa. I am not sure what she is thinking but her thoughts are up to her.

Last night, I dreamed I was riding the white bicycle through the vineyard at the bottom of the hill near Lourmarin. The path was a bit rough, like that playground when I was little and biking for the first time without training wheels, but I am now an experienced rider and I stayed in the seat. I could see the grapes forming round and ripe on the vines. I could smell the lavender in the neighboring fields. I came to the woods and I began to carry the white bicycle, remembering that after I carried it for a while, soon I would be able to ride again. I listened very carefully but I couldn't hear my mother calling. All I could hear was my own breath.

Life is like that. Sometimes things are heavy in your arms, and at other times, you are lifted forward to places you would not have discovered without the burden you have carried.

Looking backward, I can see bicycle tracks in the sandy soil but if I look ahead all I see is the distance, blue as the Luberon mountains, inviting as the cool breeze that pushes up through the hot air. It is a distance I can navigate, a space that I will be moving through with the wind in my hair. And there is no precipice ahead of me, just good solid land. There is nothing to worry about, not really.