T-3: Almost Gone...And Beyond.

It dawns on us---two days ago---that there is life after the bicycle trip.  I am busy packing up our house, removing all the little, ridiculous tchotchkes that are full of our life’s stories, when it hits me that we have given not one thought to what happens when we are done cycling.

We will be returning to our cabin in Wyoming after cycling.  We will be there in November and December---it will be winter in the mountains.  We have never been at the cabin in cold weather, so don’t have things like winter coats there.  So now we are also packing for the Wyoming sojourn, realizing that we will need computers and our electric toothbrush and other daily living items that will not be a part of our bicycle trip.

This daily living has been much the focus of the past few days.  Since Wes’ Birthday/Retirement/Bon Voyage Party last Saturday, we have been filled with almost unbearable feelings of love…for the people who came and shared their stories of travel and transformation, for our wonderful old house, our lush backyard, for goofy, unbearable, delightful Detroit…and for our animal family.

The best it has looked in years.

Wes and I had a two overwrought days on this last point.  Our kitty Mimi left the yard while Wes was busily painting the porch (which looks the best it has looked in years).  This was Monday afternoon.  She didn’t come home for dinner, usually a sure attraction.  We called her often throughout the night, all the way up until after midnight.    The next morning, we call and look, out into the alley, up and down the streets, growing ever more anxious.  No Mimi for breakfast; no Mimi by lunch.  I put out an APB on the list-serve, a great Hubbard Farms resource, and attach photos that grab my throat: Mimi just awake after sleeping in one of my hats, staring contently at the camera; Mimi, managing her daily toilet in the comfort of our bed.   Wes, sighing, says things like, “We may just have to accept that she is gone.” 

The cat in the hat

We continue looking and calling, but now it is like a millstone.  What if she doesn’t come back?  What if she comes back and finds strangers in our house?  This is not what we wanted.

Wednesday, about lunch, she comes sauntering back.  Wes is finishing the last of the painting when he hears her demands to be let in.  She is dirty and hungry, but fine.  We guess she got locked in somewhere.  Perhaps someone saw my post on list-serve and let her out of wherever she was.  Wes feeds her, locks her in the house, and comes over to Matrix to tell me.  He has tears in his eyes, and we hug in relief, knowing our cat is home.  She is now on house arrest.  Such is the punishment for wandering kitties.

There is a terrible poignancy about this moment of preparation.  It is true that we are leaving the things about our life that have worn us down…the long hours, the burdensome stress, the wear and tear on our bodies and minds.  But we are also leaving so much that we love.  We have a fine life here.

Although outsiders wouldn’t recognize it.  Life is kind of easy here in Detroit.  Wonderful, beautiful houses can be had for pennies on the dollar compared to other cities.  The climate is pretty great.  It gets hot…but not for long…it gets cold…but not for long.  It is not the unbreathable sweltering sauna of Houston, or the 10 month icebox of Wyoming.  We don’t get floods, or tornadoes, or hurricanes, fire, or mudslides.  We have lots of water.

Things love to grow here.  Wes and I still flinch as we kill volunteer trees in our yard.  In Wyoming, trees are great treasures which require much nurturing and tenderness.  Down on the Detroit river bottom, we are in an endless conversation with plants that take seriously God’s admonition to “Be fruitful and multiply.”

We swim in swirls of living, breathing art and culture.  There are more house concerts, films, poetry readings, garden plantings, neighborhood clean-ups, marches, and processions, community sports leagues, home tours, and history walks than could ever be attended.  These events are put together by swarms of community building, good hearted, do-gooders. 

Yesterday in a meeting with a potential board member, he said something that so typifies the Detroit ethic.  He said, “I just believe, that we all have to do something, even just one thing, to make the place we want to live.”  It is so true.  We know hundreds of people who are playing their part, doing the one thing they can do, from making sure the corner lot is mowed, to organizing massive protests, to babysitting the neighbor’s kids, or cats, or house, ---creating a list-serve where I can post my cat’s absence.

We know, in profound and necessary ways, that we are all in it together.  We have learned, by brutal necessity, that our survival depends on each other, and that there is no government, here or beyond, coming to do much of anything for us. 

Is it like this elsewhere?  I don’t know.  I sort of doubt it.  But we are heading out…in just three days, to see what life is like in the great beyond.  We come as sojourners, ready for discovery, but aware of the struggles, beauty, and joy we leave behind.  Already the trip is a blessing.