I have de quervain’s tenosynovitis, often called “mommy thumb.” I think I gave it to myself when I overenthusiastically returned to knitting a couple months before my new nephew joined us on this side. He just turned one, and I loved making him a lil hat, and my thumb still hurts. I had OT on Tuesday at 8am, get there by 7:30. If you tell me to be there by 7:30, I’m going to be there by 7:28, but I have figured out that really they are saying 7:30 so you’ll be there by 8 because people just ghost them all the time. But I have spent two and a half hours waiting for OT in the past couple of weeks, following these directions. And yet, on Tuesday, I left on my bike early enough to get there by 7:30.

After 30 minutes of waiting and 45 minutes of massaging, warming, sound waving, and stretching, I hopped on my bike and zoomed around for a bit before heading to Pitango bakery and cafe in Fells for a pastry. I went there for a blueberry muffin after radiation many, many times, and it was a bit of a walk down memory lane. I got the cruffin instead of that muffin–that’s what they called it after I asked for “the thing with the puffy top”–and I think if you are going to fill a thing with cream, you should let us know about that in advance.

By the time I left it was already in the mid-80s, and I thought about riding straight home, but I didn’t have another thing until 5:30 that afternoon, and no work that absolutely had to get done. I can’t remember the last time I had a stretch like that, so I biked around east Baltimore for a while. I stopped at Canton Waterfront Park and came across these adorable awkward fuzzy goslings. There was one, the runt of the gang, that was in the water, trying to figure out how to get out of the water and up that next big step to join the family. After at least ten minutes of jumping, they made it out of the water, and then it was another ten minutes of trying to get up the next level. Eeep, eeep, eeep, it felt sad!

If the gosling had gone toward the other side of the landing, there’s a ramp, and we’d solve this problem. I tried to make eye contact, pointed toward the ramp. Of course they didn’t understand me, so I got up and walked that way, hoping they’d get the hint and follow me rampside. Yeah, they didn’t understand that either.

Then I hopped down to their level. I’ll give them a little boost, I thought. Now the geese get all protective! The gosling had been whining and crying and they totally ignored it, or that’s what it looked like to me. But now I’m here, trying to help, and one of the big ones comes over and hisses at me. So I went back to my seat and thought about how this probably happens all the time, and I’m never there, and things likely work out, one way or another, and who am I to think they need my help, that I know best? God, we’re so colonial sometimes!

The group then hopped up one more level, onto the grass. The gosling made it the second level, but they were beat. They tried to jump up again, for the third time, and they kept falling hard, and then they stopped trying. The cries pinged some feeling of sadness in me, but that’s projection, so I determined it was time to get out of there. As I was packing up I noticed a woman on the other side of the landing reaching the “I’ll give them a boost!” stage of our clearly shared activity. Then the gosling jumped back in the water and the rest of them followed, and they headed east, where they’ll probably just waddle up the boat launch.

The other lady and I chatted. “I wonder if I made it worse,” she asked. We commiserated–it’s hard to hear the tiny cries of a gosling for 20-30 minutes and not want to ‘help’–and then I headed home. I zigged and zagged, it was 91 degrees, and I didn’t have enough water. I stopped at the dollar store at 25th and Greenmount, bought a drink from the register, and stood in their AC until I stopped feeling chilly and just felt hot and sweaty again. Some blocks later and I was home, sitting under a fan, drinking water.

Another thing that happened this week is that I found out an old friend died last fall. S. gave me her pink cruiser bike named Rhoda during my first spring in New Orleans. I was nursing heartache and insecurities on many levels, and then I rode her-then-my bike around New Orleans, started this blog, and figured out that riding a bike around is just the very best thing. Being on a bike is how and when I feel most at home in my body and in the world, and I figured that out from and with S. She deserved so much more than she got, and I am so grateful for her gifts to me and us. Thanks, S., and RIP.