“Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. Love, therefore, is its own reward.”  – Thomas Merton

I stumbled into the driveway yesterday afternoon, and I was discouraged. And I got a powerful less in love.

I was planning to take a short bike ride down the road to try out my new pedal straps, but I couldn’t even get started.

As the trucks and cars raced past me, I felt more and more uncomfortable.

My right leg and knee are weaker than the left, the result of breaking a knee cap on the ice during a wicked ice storm at the first Bedlam Farm. My leg kept slipping off of the bike pedal that came with the bike.

So I got new pedals with straps so my feet wouldn’t slip.

These new pedals didn’t work for me – more trouble with my stiff right knee – and I lurched and stumbled and moaned, but I couldn’t get the bike started, I couldn’t get my right foot in the straps.

I started to sweat and felt the old panic in my stomach.

As I’ve been reporting, there is a great deal of fear, even panic, attached to this new bike and biking,  my body is an old and ugly issue for me, and I’m working with a therapist to understand it and control it.

My biking efforts have been alternately exhilarating and terrifying, I have a lot of work to do.

Yesterday was a mess, I wanted to give it up. I spent nearly half an hour trying to get on that bike and move, and I couldn’t do it.

As I came into the driveway I felt discouraged and defeated, much as I did as a child when I could climb the rope in the gym or do 20 push-ups.

I was also ashamed, as I was as a child. Maria saw me through her studio window and came out, asking me if I was okay. She looked at my face and knew what was wrong. I shook my head. “It was a disaster,” I said, “I felt like a five-year-old trying his first bike.”

I was sure she had seen me struggling to get the bike going in front of the house. I just panicked. And when I came home, I was hoping she hadn’t seen me at all, I was embarrassed to have her see me.

She asked if she could help.

I said I probably just wasn’t cut out for riding a bike, perhaps I didn’t have the legs, or was just not suited for it. I just mumbled and walked the bike into the barn.

She told me this was natural and inevitable.

Don’t be discouraged, she said. She asked me to walk the bike and try to get the pedals working, and I said no, then yes. She noticed that my right leg was having trouble getting high enough to get over the pedal and into the big strap we had just put on.

“See?” she said.  “It’s not you, these are the wrong straps.” Oh, I said, I saw that this made sense. I knew the leg was weak but hadn’t connected it to the ice fall.

I was touched by her kindness and gentleness.

I went in and called the bike store and a lovely young woman answered the phone.

“Oh,” she said,” this happens all the time. You’ll get used to it.”

She recommended a pedal used for mountain bikers, it has no straps but rounded spikes that dig into the sneaker or shoe.

Then Maria came into the house gave me a hug and kiss, and told me there was nothing wrong with me, it was just the pedals.

This morning, I woke up thinking of how kind she had been, and I started to cry. She asked what was wrong and I told her nothing was wrong, I just wanted her to know how much I appreciated her kindness.

No one, I said, has ever loved me like that, or been so kind to me. It makes all the difference in the world. True love seeks only the good of the one loved.

She started to cry, also, and said she felt the same way about me. After a good cry, we had a long hug and went about our business.

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I made an appointment for Thursday to get the new pedals and also to buy a bicycle rack so I can drive the bike to safe and quiet roads and learn to ride it in peace.

I’m not riding it until then. I’m not giving up either.