It All Started With Winter Solstice And A Black Dog At A Crossroads

  

    Last year at this time I was furiously blogging; mostly about the one thing I love to do as often as possible - cycling. In this part of the world, last year's winter was especially godawful, and yammering away about all things cycling-related on the interwebs was a balm for me, and hopefully entertaining for some of you.  Well, this winter has proven itself to be even worse than the last one, and my reaction this time around has been to sit in stunned silence for the most part, occasionally slapping at the Netflix arrow to make it "go".
    I can't shake the feeling that summer never happened, or the feeling of being trapped in a zip code I no longer want to live in.  This sensation is utterly new for me; I used to love the season, and all of its activities. An aversion to winter, however, has been growing, surely and steadily.  It's not about being cold.  It's kind of not even about winter.  It's about restriction of movement, and about the resources I (and most everyone else) waste in staggering amounts to have this lifestyle in extreme weather.  It's about growing old in a place that is "no country for old" anything.
  

A fine line  

    On the Winter Solstice it was cold, but the roads were dry, so I decided to go on a 30 mile bike ride to a historic lighthouse.  During the summer the road that led to the lighthouse was being rebuilt, but by now it was complete, and smooth, and quiet.  Powdery salt drifted across the dirt shoulder, and there was a briny hint of it in the air.  As I rode along in that grey morning, I started to think, "It could always be twilight here". An anxiety began to stir within, and I remembered a time someone told me, "Anxiety is when the Universe says, 'Yes'".  Aloud, I said, "Is it ok to forget what the question was?"  At that moment I knew I was riding on a section of road that was unlike any previous section.  I don't tend to use the term, "haunted", because ghosts are rarely involved in these types of things.  It's more like a place that is not the here-and-now, but overlaps with the here-and-now anyway, like a worn-out cassette tape that plays both sides when you hit the button. One side is clear, the other a whisper; but which is which?  The results of this overlapping can be, "busy" all the way to, "I'm really not welcome here".  At that moment I was smack-dab in the middle of "slightly disturbing".  Knowing at this stage in my life never to ask, "why" because sometimes there's an answer, I kept on pedaling until, about 2 miles down the road, I felt the unnerving place fall away behind me.  It was no longer "always twilight" and the sky, the houses, the road all appeared normal.
    I arrived at the access road to the lighthouse without incident about 20 minutes later, and found a barrier across it for the off-season.  Since walking my bike around the barrier would take me through what looked like someone's front yard, I decided to turn around and head back. Oh well!  Never reaching your intended destination is just one of the many things I love about cycling.  I took some awful glove-hampered cell phone photos, ate a few snacks, and rode back the way I came.
    Pretty soon I was back in the "special zone".  This time, as I approached an intersection with another road, I passed two things: a large stump with several pairs of children's shoes and stuffed animals nailed to it, and a sign that read,  "High Collision Intersection. Drive Smart."  How did I not see these things while going in the other direction, I thought.  Then I noticed there was only the sign facing in my direction - there was no warning on the other side (?)  And the stump was set back from the road a bit on this side.  Well, I could have seen the stump out of the corner of my eye while riding the other way, and then I could have subconsciously "felt" something.  There is a fine line.  Or, as some say, a veil.

     

Another road and a dog

      

    At an intersection I came to an abrupt stop and stared at the black shepherd dog standing in the middle of the crossroad, looking in my direction - searching, it seemed to me.  Cars coming from all directions started to slow and halt.  The dog took a few limping steps, then again looked up, searching.  I tried calling to her - there was no reaction.  A truck on my side stopped and the driver asked me what was going on.  I started to babble something about trying to lure the dog and maybe there was injury and his face went blank and he drove away while I was in mid-sentence. Other cars started to creep around the dog and drive off.  Just as I was beginning to panic about what to do, a woman pulled up and yelled to me out of her window, "Should I call the SPCA?"  Relieved, I replied, "Yes!  I didn't know there was an SPCA in this town!"  At that moment, the dog suddenly snapped to attention, like she just remembered she had somewhere important to be, turned around and trotted lopsidedly through someone's yard toward a green house set back from the road. I jogged with my bike over to the woman in her car, and said, "I'm going to ride down to the house and ask if that's their dog.  I can't tell if she's injured or where she's supposed to be."  

    I got on my bike and took off down the road and on to the dirt driveway.  The dog was nowhere in sight.  As I got closer to the house, I saw it had a sliding glass front door with a lot of potted plants behind it and I paused for a second.  Probably never used, I decided, and kept going.  The driveway curved away at the back of the house where there was a parked car, and there the dog stood, looking at the back door. I laid my bike down in the driveway, its lights still blinking, and walked at an angle toward the dog, who was now pointedly staring at me.  She let out a no-nonsense warning bark a second later, and I told her she was a good girl and tried not to hold my breath.  I could see now the flecks of white on her muzzle, like snow.  She barked once more at me as I came closer, but this time she pointed her nose at the door right after - "Let me in!" I laughed my relief and walked up the steps and rang the bell.
    "Ahhh!" A woman's voice.
    "Hello?" I yelled, trying to look in a kitchen window but seeing nothing but the top of a sink.
    "Ahhh!" Again, shaky.  An elderly woman.
    "Do you need help?"  Holy shit!
    "Ye-es! I can't come to the door!"  Holy shit shit!
    "I'm going to call for help! I'll be right back!"  Hoping that was in my Adult Voice.  I grabbed my phone out of my jacket and ran around to where I could see the road.  The woman was still in her car but had pulled it up to the end of the driveway.  I started running toward her with my phone held in the air, like this was a universal symbol for something useful.  It was at least batty enough to get her to jump out of her car and come running.  She met me almost halfway.
    "I went to the back door and a woman on the other side said she needed help!" I panted.  Was I holding my breath that whole time?
    "Oh my god!  I'll call 911!"  I noticed she was also holding her phone aloft.
    "I'll go back to the house and see if she's ok!"  We were Agents of Doing Something.  I ran back around the corner where the shepherd dog still stood expectantly at the door.
    "Someone is on the way to help you!" I yelled as I ran up the steps, and impulsively grabbed the knob.  It was unlocked.  As soon as the door was open part way the black dog barged her way in.  If there had been any doubt she lived there, it was gone in one proprietary second.

Am I an asshole?

      As soon as I was in the door I was facing a set of carpeted stairs, and to my left was the doorway to the kitchen.  "Hello?"  I leaned into the kitchen at the sound of her voice, and there were the head and shoulders of a white-haired woman smiling at me from a bed in a room at the back.  

    "Are you ok?  Help is on the way!"  She's bed-ridden.  She hasn't fallen.  Jesus!

    "Oh, I'm fine! I can't answer the door, I'm stuck in bed."

    "Oh! Uh, do you have anyone taking care of you?  Do you need anything?"  ?????

    "Oh, bless your heart!  My husband Bill is upstairs.  He's probably asleep.  You can call him.  He's hard of hearing.  So, what is your name?"  I answered, starting to feel my head morphing into that heel shape like in a Warner Bros. cartoon.  She proceeded to ask for my last name, and precisely what part of the street we found her dog wandering on, "That's Lily.  She limps because she's old. And she's probably getting a little senile, too."  I looked at Lily, who had made herself comfortable in the hallway. She met my gaze and sniffed.  After some more orderly in-depth questioning (well, I had just walked into her house uninvited), the woman again assured me she was fine, and to go get her husband Bill upstairs.  Then it struck me - what if there was no "husband Bill"?  What if the woman was "getting a little senile" like her dog?  To me it seemed impossible that anyone would have slept through a stranger walking into his house and talking loudly across a room with his wife.  He would have at least sensed the change, wouldn't he?  Wouldn't I?  I wouldn't have fallen asleep in the first place, ever.  Never, ever again!  The complete absence of worry in this house was, worrying.  And a new thought - if he did exist and I walked upstairs and startled an old deaf man, would I give him a heart attack?  I tiptoed to the bottom of the stairs, "Uh, Bill?" I called up, rather limply.  Nothing stirred.  I could see a closed door at the top and I listened to the silence.  Remember, there's a car in the driveway, I told myself.  Someone drives it, and it isn't her.
    I walked back into the kitchen doorway and took a good look for the first time.  The kitchen was clean, and tidy.  There were hamburgers defrosting on the counter.  Clearly Lily's counter-surfing days were over.  And clearly someone was taking care of everything and everyone in that house.
    "I want to thank you so much for your help!" the woman beamed.  I looked down at the floor - it was covered with dirt and melting snow from my cycling shoes.  More work for Bill.  I smiled at her wanly.  I didn't quite feel like what I was doing was "help".
    There was movement in the corner of my eye - the woman from the car was standing behind the glass screen door waving her arm.  I had left the main door to the house open too, I realized with mounting embarrassment.  The heel-shaped head threatened to turn into the donkey butt.  I walked over and cracked open the door.  She gave me the 911 Report - there was an officer and an ambulance on the way.  I told her about the woman being confined to a bed, and my dilemma, real or imagined, with Bill.  We looked at each other for a minute, and then decided to let the 911 call stand, and hopefully get the SPCA call canceled.  She walked off dialing her phone, and I walked back into the kitchen.

"Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing" - Lao Tzu

    "Someone should be here very soon to check on you - I'm very sorry for the intrusion."  I was starting to reel under the destructive power of Good Intentions.

    "Oh my, I can't thank you enough for your help!"  That unending cheeriness, a constant light on in the face of someone whose life dangled by a thread held at one end by an old man who had fallen asleep somewhere.  A thread that could be unraveled by well-meaning nincompoops.  I took one last look at her, at the dog curled on the rug in the hallway, at this solid and quiet part of a house I no longer wanted to leave for some reason, "I'm going to go outside and wait."

    The police officer had already arrived and was speaking to the woman, who was scowling.  When he saw me coming he walked over.  His face wore the bland mask of training.  A friend once told me about a sudden revelation regarding authority she had had during emergency heart surgery.  She had to remain awake during the procedure, and she realized that the only way she could get truthful, or any, answers to her questions was to ignore the blood pouring out of her chest cavity and the fact that she could die at any moment, and pretend like she was at a seminar, or a dinner party.  In other words, she had to fluff the surgeons' illusion of themselves as having no doubts or fears of their abilities.  This advice served me now as I tried to answer his questions as concisely and emotionless as possible.  Because now I wanted there to be less, not more.  Privacy for this house, not eyes upon it.

    He strode over to the back door, and the woman turned to me, wrinkled her nose, and whispered, "I don't like him.  He's too gruff, almost rude!"

    "Well, I think he's just making sure he has the facts."  She doesn't know.  She's my age, maybe older, but she doesn't know.  "Maybe we should head back down the driveway." 

    I picked up my bike and we walked down to her car.  She asked me where I was riding.  I told her about the lighthouse, and how I didn't actually make it all the way.  She said, matter-of-factly, "Oh, you could've gone around the barrier."

    "What?"  I stopped and stared at her, but she was looking elsewhere.  The ambulance was pulling up.  A very happy driver rolled down her window and said, "Were you the ones who called?"  We nodded. "The  officer called us off - we're going to go get lunch!"  Lunch!  My inner hobbit grew alarmed; I was clammy, I was freezing, and I was very hungry, with significant miles to go between here and where I lived.  But no one was going to remove two old ladies, one human and one canine, from their mutual home, and that was a relief in the soul.

"How frail the human heart must be - a mirrored pool of thought." - Sylvia Plath

     The cop pulled up alongside me as I was riding away.  I slowed down and stopped.  "I wanted to let you know everything is ok.  It looks like there was a bit of an over-reaction."  I could feel my face flushing. "The husband, Bill, is hard of hearing and it seems he was sleeping on his good ear." A-ha!

"And I just want to apologize if I seemed short with the both of you - I needed to make sure I knew everything."  This touched me unexpectedly.  Could he have heard the woman whispering to me?  I thanked him, and apologized also, and thanked him again, and we went in our separate directions.

    I found myself riding hard; instinctively trying to get warm again.  But maybe also to flee something, or flee to something.  I wanted to be far away from the tenuous world of those three beings - so fragile, held to each other by something thinner than a molecule - and from my ridiculous worry, my desire to somehow keep them safe, preserved, and therefore not real.  The two mingle, the reality of growing old in this world and the desire to keep that world from encroaching, and they split apart again, and this is the current, the movement overlapping all other movements; and which is which depends on your stretch of the road.

Details were altered or omitted to protect the privacy of humans and canines.