Bike Ride Through The Woods

We are under so much stress right now as we try to adapt to this new stay-at-home lifestyle—and try to adapt under a heavy burden of fear. Many also face financial stress. I’m on furlough from my job during COVID-19, since my nonprofit work depends upon public meetings. My husband Glenn’s job, since it depends on travel, is also on hold. We have a buffer that will last a few months, so we are in a better place than many. Still, it’s scary to not know where our next paychecks are coming from—or when they’re coming.

Glenn and I rarely quarrel, but it’s inevitable that this degree of stress can test a relationship. The week we lost much of our small retirement savings in the stock market crash and the week both our jobs vanished, we had our first coronavirus fight. I share it in case others are experiencing conflict and might need a lift, because the experience ended up drawing us closer together. Our misunderstanding began as we were riding our bikes along Greens Bayou about a mile from our house. We were traveling along a gravel path that was about to end when Glenn veered right toward the bayou—toward the weeds and the unknown. I didn’t want to go there. There was a cement path not far away if we took a left. Why not ride over there?

I stopped and yelled, “Just go on your own and come back for me. I’ll wait here!”

Glenn slowed to a stop, glared and cupped his ear. “What?”

I said it again.

He shook his head and motioned for me to ride up beside him so he could hear, but I shook my head, No, thank you. I wasn’t willing to ride those thirty weedy feet off the clean cement path. After age forty, I stopped off-roading.

“Just go and I’ll wait here,” I repeated.  

Glenn scowled and rode away. And away away away. He got smaller and smaller until I could tell he wasn’t coming back. Glenn is an emotional man. Having grown up in an environment in which hostile silence was a key weapon, it’s refreshing to be with a man who expresses his emotions. There he goes again, I thought with exasperation and affection. Rather than stand there alone, I chased after him. Soon, he cut toward the main road and disappeared behind the woods. Where was he? 

I sped up. When I reached the parking lot of Fall Creek Sports Complex, which is surrounded by trees, there was no sign of him. There were a lot of people out rollerblading, jogging, playing volleyball—none of them socially distancing, though they should be. Where was he?

I biked a few minutes or so on my own. I countered my anxiety with reason. We were only a mile from home. I could find my way back with my eyes closed, nearly. Glenn knew his way back, too. Surely some sweaty person with COVID-19 wasn’t going to tackle him, right? Of course not. Everything would be fine. But, not knowing where he was, it felt like he—or I—could be lost forever. I panicked. My husband is twenty-eight years my senior, and it’s likely he will leave me here on this Earth without him. I dread the day with all my being.

Sssh, calm down. Yes, he’s more vulnerable than you are to COVID-19, but he’s on a bike. No one’s going to sneeze on him. This is a park. We’re in the open air. We’re safe, right? We’ll see each other on the trail again soon, I thought. But during a pandemic, reason doesn’t seem as sturdy as usual. This virus spreads more swiftly than any we’ve seen. In that it is transferred by those without symptoms, its movement didn’t make sense. As soon as we heard about it, it seemed to be everywhere. And how did something so small—microscopic, even—topple the stock market and halt worldwide economic systems? How did it take Glenn’s and my jobs in just a week? The unpredictable, deadly nature of the virus gouged away at “sense.” My heart beat fast through the trees, faster than my pedaling feet.

Where was Glenn?

Finally after I sped past the clearing for the pipeline and swerved back into the woods, I saw my husband ahead. I relaxed. There was sweet, silly, passionate Glenn Olsen, who I love with all I’ve got. Glenn glanced back, and then looked forward again. He was going to ignore me! That man. But I knew pretending was his way of flirting. If he actually was still mad, he’d get over it. We always forgave large and small issues and came back together again.

Glenn slowed, as if to let me catch up. Once I got closer, he sped up again. A*!@hole, I thought, a term of affection I use several times a day. He is so full of sh#%! I thought with delighted weariness. Well, I’m going to be a grownup. Let him play games. The trail made a big circle. I was happy now. I knew he couldn’t get far.

We rounded another couple bends, with him so far ahead I couldn’t see him. After I rounded the second, he ran out of the bushes and cried “Boo!”

I slowed to halt and gave him a searing look. “Grow up! You are so immature!” I often say this. I relish the irony of calling him immature. Glenn laughed and went back for his bike, which he’d hidden in the bushes. He wheeled it to a bench and sat. “Come on, I need to rest.”

“I was scared. Don’t ever do that again.”

“Do what? I didn’t do anything.”

“You left me!”

“You told me to go! The trail was ending and you wouldn’t follow me.”

“I told you to go and come back for me. You didn’t come back for me.”

“You didn’t tell me to come back for you.’”

“Yes, I did.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I said to come back for me. You didn’t hear me!”

“You wouldn’t come over when I asked you to.”

Our fight continued like this until I interrupted: “Look, stop. Just stop. This is a scary time! Please don’t ever leave me again no matter what. We could go over the details of this all day long, but I don’t want to! That would be dumb. Here we are, we misunderstood each other, let’s get over it and just get along again. Please. Look, we are all we’ve got right now. We don’t have our work, we don’t have our finances, we don’t have being with other people and going out and doing things that make us happy like going to movies or the museum. We are all we’ve got. Things have to be good between us, or we don’t have anything,” I said.

Glenn considered for a moment. Looking in my eyes, he said, “Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I won’t leave you. I never would have left you if I had understood that you wanted me to come back for you.”

“Thank you.” I squeezed his hand. “I love you,” I said.

“I love you, too.”

“Are you sure?” I asked because he was looking down instead of at me.

“Yes! I thought you didn’t want to go to the park anymore. I never would have left if you’d said to come back for you. I would never leave you, whether it’s something small or large.”

“Good. So can we be friends again?”

“I guess so,” Glenn said.

I rolled my eyes, though I knew he was just teasing and we were fine. “So can we seal it with a kiss?”

We did seal it. Then we got on our bikes, and I stayed right behind Glenn as a new coolness arose in the woods, through a low chorus of toads, past the loblolly pines by Greens where bald eagles were tucking in, along the mowed medians of Fall Creek Bend, all the way to home.