Lost Girl Found

Bike on Lane

I can still feel the heft of the old bulkhead door as my sister and I lifted it one long-ago day in early April, then scrambled down the cement steps into the dark stone cellar to drag our bicycles, all cobwebby and coal-dusted, up those steep, subterranean steps to the sun.

It was a primary ritual of spring, as essential to our well-being as stories and dreams.

In upstate New York, there could still be traces of snow in damp, shadowy places under porches and behind barns, but the unmistakable scent of spring was in the air: sweet, colored with longer light, tinged with the fragrance of yet unborn lilacs. A scent that awakened us, excited us, and made us wild.

We would drag up those blue bikes, dust them off, walk them up to the Dodge dealer at the end of West Main and give the tires bracing shots of air. And then, we were off, out past the muddy cornfields, past the barely budding maples, past the limits of town and winter’s edge. We rode hard and fast with the cold April wind in our ears, mad with joy.

And now, so many years later, I still ride my bike with the girl in me calling the shots. She loves the downhills, sets her heart racing with the uphills, is lost in the glorious moments of green wind and pale sun and lilacs and lilies yet to come. She is a lost girl finally found.