Pedaling Toward the Sun
I can’t ride a bike. I don’t pedal. Some days in my past were darker than others. There’s something about a single ray of sunlight coming through your bedroom window and touching you softly on your ring finger.
I used to peddle away from everything, and hide from it. It was easier to be quiet. To open the door to the closet, carefully tiptoe behind the boxes, and snuggle in against the coldness of the wall. An adult clubhouse full of melancholy. I called it the hole. It was my down space. My cave. A cavern of despair. It felt good to wallow.
Every morning I wake up and open my shades at six to let the light in. To allow the early sun to wash over me. I’m not religious, but it feels like a baptism. Turn left. Power wires fade into a montage of treetops and clouds. Clouds dance together without a care in the world like a ballerina in a room with no mirrors. It’s pure.
It’s not surprising I used to head for darkness. Grief and loss pummeled me when I was too young to expect it. It dropkicked me in the bread basket. You can’t keep your chin up when your mom stopped breathing a day ago, a month ago, a year ago. Ago, ago. I regressed until I progressed.
I let my tears run into a jar that I hid under my desk in the back corner of my new room at a new college. I ate giant oatmeal raisin cookies at the mall with my stepbrother, and bought video games at Babbages, to assuage my inner turmoil. I pumped iron over and over until I looked like someone new. I didn’t cut my hair for a year. I was pedaling in place.
This morning, I meditated. I read. I ate oatmeal and actually exclaimed, while watching a few minutes of Below Deck, “Yum.” Life is what you turn yourself into. My first gallery was called Metamorphosis. I was going from law to art and retail. I was the butterfly. No, I am the butterfly. I always want to be a new butterfly.
I like the light now. I push my face up into it when walking. Random benches are life’s way of telling you to hit pause. Chewing your food slowly is like discovering Hubba Bubba watermelon for the first time. I don’t see the darkness. I pedal toward the sun.
© Jonathan Greene, July 30, 2026
