Zooming On A Sunday Afternoon

Missing from this collage of screen shots is me, but I am there. It’s a weekly visit I try very hard not to miss. My friendships with these women, and theirs with one another, go back thirty years, and it is hard to describe how much I love and respect them. A lot of our history involves riding bicycles together, and all of them except me are still active cyclists, but I hope to get my chops back one of these days, and no one has kicked me out. Anyway, we’re so much more than bike buddies. We’ve watched kids grow up, traveled together, weathered illness and difficult losses, navigated moves and big life changes, celebrated joyful times, and managed never to lose contact. Our current geographies extend as far south as Oceanside and as far north as Santa Rosa, but I’m pretty sure I could reach any of these gals within a matter of minutes if I needed to talk.

Clockwise above: Loretta, Donna, Teresa, and Chris. Yesterday’s visit was also Donna’s birthday, and there was quite a bit of craving for the birthday cake she’d baked according to her mother’s special recipe. Loretta had news of ripe mangos, among other delights she discovered when she pedaled over to a market called Oliver’s, and Chris, resting up from a Saturday bike epic in Mendocino, did a marvelous Julia Child impression as she prepared dinner in her familiar kitchen. Teresa sat outside in the sunlight, or being the sunlight–with Teresa, it’s hard to say which, and told us about a baby shower she had organized for her daughter the previous day. (Teresa and I became new mothers in 1987, about two months apart; now the daughters to whom we gave birth are replicating the very same miracle, this time with baby boys.) So as you can see, there’s a full-circle kind of feeling. And if we start to reminisce, there is no end to the memories, but right now we’d rather look forward and hope that we will emerge from this tunnel before very long and have time in person together. We will never take it for granted. Oh, we are going to savor life!

Then again, it appears to me that we already do savor life, and by and large, we always have. Zooming on a Sunday afternoon with these four strong, smart, beautiful friends is just a confirmation. It’s an interim way of expressing our love, maybe a kind of promise for the days yet to come. And you know how these online visits can be: people often speaking over each other, or everyone falling silent, and sometimes it just feels weird and stilted, because everything is weird and stilted right now.

But with the Bike Babe zoom girls, not so much. Our updates feel effervescent, even if they tumble over each other now and then, like the conversations we might have while riding, a word or two lost, but the rush of the world about our heads in all its magic, and some dusty, grassy, sage-scented essence underscoring the actual point. Even our silences are comfortable. We know who we are and what we’ve seen, and we’re still here together.

Then suddenly there are five minutes left until time to “leave meeting” and there’s a chirpy chorus of good-byes, and the worst part: the little ache afterwards. Does everyone feel the little ache? It doesn’t last, but it’s always a bit sad. And we vanish into our separate lives, but we're fortified, somehow. See you next Sunday. Happy birthday week, Donna.