Just Like Riding a Bike

When I was a kid, living up north, I used to see robins all the time.

If you wanted to know if spring was coming, leave the groundhog alone, and instead look for the robin.  They always seemed to arrive in March, around the same time the trees finally began to bud.

In Florida, I see robins now occasionally, usually for a day or two at most, usually in large groups, and usually in passing as they make a quick stop here on the way to places even warmer.

This morning, as I was walking the Wetlands, I turned my attention away from the water and instead looked to the trees on the other side of the road.  I saw the same small birds, warblers and sparrows, that live and hide among the grass before flying to the trees when they see me coming.

But today, a bit of color caught my eye.

There was a robin, with its deep red chest, sitting alone and behind some leaves.

It had been so long since I had last seen one, I almost doubted for a second that I was seeing what I was seeing, but then I saw the white ring around its eyes and I said, “Yep, there’s my robin.”

It was a pleasant surprise and as it’s February now that robin can only be headed in one direction … back home.

I don’t know what the groundhog will say—he always seems to be wrong—but that robin tells me that spring is coming.

Honestly, whenever I see a robin, it makes me feel like a kid again—that’s how much I associate it with my childhood, with the joy I felt that the long months of cold and ugly, gray snow were coming to an end.

A few hours after my visit to the Wetlands this morning, I stood in the parking lot with my new bike.

Yep, I have a new bike.

Because of my vertigo and balance problems, it has been years since I have ridden a bike.  I mean why even try?  It’s possible it’s been as long as fifteen years since I last pedaled anything that wasn’t stationary.

But it just goes to show how far I’ve come in treating my vertigo that I made the choice to buy a new bike, not knowing if I would even be able to ride it.

I should add that I also bought a helmet.

The tires needed inflating.

And apparently bike riding involves using quad muscles that I don’t have.

So, I was a bit wobbly on my maiden voyage, a short ride lasting maybe two minutes.

And while I didn’t giggle like I did the first time I rode my kick scooter, I did smile.

I beamed.

I felt like a kid again.

I felt such joy.

And I felt a release.  I felt something shift.

It was like seeing that first robin after the long winter, being able to ride a bike for the first time after suffering from vertigo for years.

I know winter will come again.

It comes to all of us.

But spring always follows.

New life begins.