Heaven's Here On Eart

I like to ride my bike. Actually, it's not mine. I ride my mother's bike or I ride my sister's bike. I prefer my mother's.

I don't bicycle to LIVESTRONG. I ride to get out of the house in the morning. I ride to set an example for my sedentary parents. Way-hay! Excercise is fabulous! These bikes are yours remember? See how I use them more than you do? You can't call your family lazy to their faces, particularly when you are now once again living at home, having majored in anthropology and zoology and foolishly decided to put off grad school for a year.

I ride to get some sun on my shoulders and to make my legs tired so I can sleep at night. I ride at a leisurely pace. Hum-dum hum-dum go the pedals as I weave along the country roads.

"Hello chickens!" I yell to the my neighbors' two free-range roosters.

The goats answer for the chickens, bellowing their thick-tongued mehhhs at me. They stick their heads through the slats of the fence and look like large, stupid dogs.

"Hello goats!" I call to them. Goats have made me happy ever since I noticed they have rectangular pupils.

The goats and the chickens belong to the gay couple that moved into the old stone farmhouse down the road. On Saturday and Sunday, they sell fresh herbs and local crafts. My father refers to them as "the happy boys" a nickname he says uncomfortably, but that belies a sort of tolerance and even affection. I think my dad likes to see the roosters running around in the fencerows. No one else around here raises chickens.

If the wind is right, you can smell basil in their garden. But today, the wind blows from elsewhere and the only scent is clover.

The ditches are full of wildflowers. There are cornflowers, Queen Anne's lace, bright purple thistles punctuated with bumblebees.

I think about grad school. I think about all the things I need to get done. I think about Washington D.C. I think about the Smithsonian and drawers and drawers of bones and broken artifacts waiting to be sorted and cleaned and reassembled.

There are redwing blackbirds flying above me, five of them. I don't think I've ever seen them in such a large flock before. Usually it's just the one, he sits on the telephone wire at the end of our driveway and sings Oh wee kira weeee!

I think about being bored. I think about how this ride will be the only really happy part of my day. I think about getting home and feeling antsy and worried about not having a job. I think about too much leisure time.

At least I'm not getting raped in the Congo, I think. All I have is a dull ache between my legs from the bicycle seat bruising.

I decide to go further than I usually do, but the new route is full of trucks and sporty little cars, scooting me into the gravel. They've mown down the ditches here so there aren't any birds or flowers.

"Hello cows!" I yell to the angus in the pasture. They don't look up, and I can't blame them. Cows' heads are heavy. I think about Ang cleaning longhorn skulls as a personal favor for a museum contributor, how she left the eyeballs, glazed and milky, on the prep room counter for me to look at.

I cross the road and make a sharp turn onto the road where my parents live, finishing my loop. A different neighbor is siphoning out his muck pit, the air is heavy with cow manure, a smell I like.

The corn is high and tasseled on either side of the driveway now, a green waving hedge that my mom thinks of as her privacy hedge. It will be gone in several weeks.

I glide to a stop, enjoying the momentum while it lasts.