Excerpt ONE from THIRTEEN MOONS

EXCERPT from THIRTEEN MOONS
by Carol Harada

ONE

There was only one way to meet him. My horse Jimmu Tenno led me to that particular village to rest. An old woman had heard of me and led me to the weaver’s hut, close to the best stream-fed grasses for his snow capes, sandals and hats.

He was unfailing in his respect, making a space for me to rest in the corner, a pallet out of extra straw. We made a stew together, me offering some of my berries that are good for the blood. Wishing for a daughter to ask me one day about how I met her father, I kept the answer with me for years. Our first meal together, I knew I loved him.

It was his skillful hands, never hurried, so intelligent in the way they touched and were touched by his drying grasses. He cooked too, with those handmade spoons oiled to a fine glow by his human touch, in a way that held a great intimacy with his world. A delight.

I arrived in the spring and never left. That is, we had a village wedding very soon, and rather than gossiping about my forwardness, the villagers were glad to have a medicine woman in their midst. I settled in to meet the new plants, riding out on Jimmu every day while my husband did his very local gathering, drying, and weaving. He prepared for the long rains season, went around to villagers to assess their capes and hats and sandals, and to visit. When he was in the busy time, people knew to visit him at his place by the stream.

Often the villagers would say, “I just saw your weaver,” as I did my rounds. Unless there was a baby coming or a person dying, we spent every evening together. He liked to hear me read the stories about the plants, shocked that some of his old friends had these other lives as healing substances. Or he would tell me of the forecast indicated by his plants, or the songbirds’ early or late arrivals. Sometimes he’d invite our neighbors over for a feast, to which everyone was happy to bring their best pickled vegetables or preserved plum or special rice wine. Some brought their instruments. And I occasionally sang my not-secret herbal apothecary songs.

He was training me to snowshoe in the mud, for it would be much easier in the snow, having built up those muscles. Now I put them on every time I went out to the night soil fields. Around the time of learning to walk in this way, I had to learn all over again as my girth started to show. His hands knew before mine, one night as he gripped me by the hips. I dreamt I heard my pelvis widen and saw a bright line shine though the new gap in my pubis. The light said something wonderful and terrible is coming. More life.

The Tale You Just Told

THE TALE YOU JUST TOLD
by Carol Harada

Suzette’s client had been yammering on about the travails and wailing and to no availing. For fifteen minutes Suzette did the concerned eyebrow tilde, the sympathetic nod, the empathetic sigh. Then merciless swift, she said, “Ok.”

The client stopped in her tracks. “No, it’s not ok!”

Suzette held her hand up and enunciated carefully. “The tale you just told. How is that working for you?”

The client’s mouth opened and shut. She pointed a finger up to the slow revolving ceiling fan, opened her mouth again. No sound came out. She closed her mouth and her lips met tentatively.

Suzette knew the trick here was to pour her big compassionate heart out of her warm brown eyes. To pause, to wait expectantly.

Right on time, the client’s face broke and she sobbed and covered her mouth with one hand, making her sorrow echo. With the other hand she reached for the tissue box, which Suzette already held out in front of her. The smoothness, the timing, the right tone and heart-pouring eyes all came from ten years of sitting across from suffering. And remembering to bring her own with her.

Suzette let the client cry and waited some more. The words would come. Already she was tracking and syncing up with the client’s minute rocking.
Something was finding its rhythm again deep inside this large human being who was feeling so small.

Together the client and Suzette rocked, until the client stopped. She dragged the tissue over her face, smeared her lipstick. And she remembered. This was not her tale of woe. No, this whole thing belonged to someone else.

And the session gained steam. Both looked at the clock and agreed that this warranted the add-on half hour. The borrowed tale was taken apart — an ugly old hand-me-down sweater dismantled thread by thread. The client was left with a big cloud of crinkly yarn. Her lipstick was still smeared, her mascara bolted down one cheek, and yet she shone. She looked down at her arms and saw her own skin.

Kiku and Jésus

Kiku and Jésus
from Heart Medicine Bones
a novel by Carol Harada

In the night bubble of her car, Kiku remembers the first time she met the janitor with the blessed name. She’d forgotten something that night, her calendar or something, and returned to the studio to find him sculpting small animals out of clay. They marched across the work table in pairs.

“Noah’s ark?” she asked, startling him.
He apologized and begged her not to report him. The studio was already spotless. She introduced herself and smiled in wonder at his name. Not religious, she still took it as a sign to take off her coat and sit. He stammered that his young daughter needed them for a class project. She looked at the clock, at the simple animal forms and at the still embarrassed man before her.

Kiku tore off some clay and pulled out two foxes and told him the tale of Fox Woman in Japan. She pulled out two ravens and told him a Salish creation story she heard from Josh. Together, working easily within talk and silence, they completed his task. She helped him transfer the figures to flat boxes, since he didn’t need to fire them. As she left Berkeley behind for the second time that night, she passed the aftermath of a horrible pileup and Hazmat trucks just leaving. Jésus saves.

That was ten years ago. And now Inez is old enough to have a miscarriage and see the scientific wisdom in it. Kiku’s arms feel heavy on the wheel. What Jésus said about having a daughter reminds her of the special regard that Sumi’s missed since Josh died. How pitiful for one parent to try to make up for the attentions of a missing one.

One time Kiku had asked Jésus why he doesn’t pursue sculpting as a profession. She had seen a spark flutter in his eyes, but then dim. He was a widower, an immigrant from the Yucatan, and no one had asked him that before. He said simply, “Here, I am a janitor.” She tried to encourage him to take a class. He never did, but ever since then, with her encouragement he’d work alone in the night studio when he wanted to, sometimes leaving her a note with a request to fire a piece he deemed worth keeping.

Next day after news of Inez’s miscarriage, Kiku finds a clay figure on her desk of a toothy being with cupped hands in front of her small breasts. The note from Jésus says she is the Aztec goddess of love and excrement, Tlazolteotl. She eats filth given up in confession and offers love and forgiveness at the time of death. For purification, generally. “Do something with her,” he writes. “I made one for me too.”

Got Judo?

GOT JUDO?

Her car, ready to be sold, is sitting in the driveway. Grammy Nan squints at me as I put the scraper to the inside of the rear window. Through the glass I notice she’s wincing, afraid that her beloved will be damaged. Not me, the car. I look at the implement and wonder if some solvent would unstick the sticker.

Her little white Honda Civic with the ‘got judo?’ decal has always puzzled those driving behind her. A week before they took her license away, she was fetching me from the dentist. A huge stubbly guy on a motorcycle slowed past her open window, rasping, “What belt? What belt?” I forget what color she shouted, but it was pretty impressive for a seventy-two year old. The motorcycle guy gave a thumbs up, bowed a little, and sped off into the hills.

When I emerge from the back seat, Grammy Nan smiles up at me. “Hey, you’re a good looker! If I were a few years younger, watch out.” It doesn’t make me blush anymore. Doc Reynolds says it’s a good sign, that despite the forgetting, she’s still essentially herself. The world’s biggest flirt. “Thanks, Grammy. I’m gonna leave the sticker for now. I’d probably mess it up if I took it off with this.”

“Okay, Bradley. I’m going for my walk.” She turns and with her sparkly gold cane toddles off down the driveway to do her cul-de-sac rounds. She will stop to greet the Bartons’ cinnamon-colored Bouvier and give him a dog biscuit from the jar that Mom tolerates by the breadbox.

I call the number on the email and arrange for a giggling Suzette to come by and see the car. When she shows up half an hour later, Mom answers the door and leads her into the living room where the light is better. She takes Suzette’s face in her hands, turning it from side to side with gentle fingers. The woman holds still during this odd appraisal. Suddenly remembering that this is not one of her ER patients, Mom steps back.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re the spitting image of my mother, when she was your age. Look, Brad!”

Mortified, I nod at Suzette and slide my sweaty hands down into my pockets. Mom flips through a photo album. There on one of the black felty pages, is a scalloped black and white showing saucy Nan McIntosh in her tennis whites at the college, having bested the man later known in our family as Papa Bear. As if we were watching that decisive tennis match, Mom and I swivel our heads between Suzette and the picture of young Grammy. Like twins separated by a time machine.

Suzette smiles gamely, “What a coinkidink! Can I see the car?”

I lead her through the kitchen, offering her a glass of water on the way, but she shakes her blond ponytail, totally focused. When she sees the Honda, she actually squeals. “Eeek! I love it!”

“You do? It’s nothing flashy.” I can’t help but notice the spangles sewn onto her tight white capri pants and matching jacket.

“I love love love it!”

I remember my job here. “You’re right, what’s not to love? It’s a great reliable car that’s only been driven by a little old lady. Only 84, 000 miles on it.
Just got a full tune up.”

“Oh, it’s perfect! White’s my color!” Her clothes, her teeth, the sclera in her big brown eyes are all blinding. She claps the palms of her hands together neatly, fingers splayed. She has a silver ring on each finger.

I open the door for her and she slides into the driver’s seat. She pulls the lever for more legroom and tilts the mirror. Wrapping her ringed fingers around ten and two, she makes vroom vroom sounds. She’s like a kid in one of those drop-a-quarter racing cars outside a grocery store. Thrilled.

Suzette opens the window and adjusts the side mirror. I lean on the car, hoping my pits don’t smell. “It’s exactly how I pictured it. I dreamt about this car two weeks ago. When I saw it on Craigslist, I knew it was mine.”

I’m nodding, smiling, considering a higher starting price. There’s sure to be haggling, what with the woman being my grandmother’s time machine twin. Just then Grammy Nan comes up the driveway, having chatted up the home-schooled Jensens. She sees Suzette in the Honda, and me leaning over to chat. Something misfires in her brain and she goes ballistic. With invisible strength little Grammy Nan charges, pushing me aside and thrusting her cane into the open window and thrashing it around. “You hussy! Get out of my car! It’s my car and my boyfriend!”

Suzette is petrified, trying to make herself small on the passenger side, as I disarm Grammy Nan, holding the gold cane high above her head. Grammy points at me, “Cheater!” She grabs my upper arm, ready to throw me to the ground. And with a grunt and an audible whump, here I am on my gravel-eating back looking up at this tiny stranger. I am grateful that Mom is a doctor.

Grammy Nan puts her hands together formally and bows to me, her vanquished foe. And then I remember, she’s a brown belt. She showed the judo sash to me after the dentist and the curious motorcycle guy. It was frayed and coiled in her underwear drawer, patiently waiting for the next match.

Labyrinth

It had been a long time since I’d walked the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. So Friday I went. Bonus: Karma Moffett improvising on the Tibetan bowls, bells, and horns. A rich soundscape and a silent walking meditation. I was thrilled to once again dive in.

You enter this sacred space and begin to walk along the winding path. Like any meditation, it brings up all your stuff. I saw impatient people pass others to rush to the center. Others stayed a long long long time in the tiny center, even though many others were waiting. I felt myself judging, then gave it up. There will be space when I get there. No worries.

This is a pilgrimage in miniature, the feet following the crenelations of the brain rather than long torturous mountain paths. I fell into fascination with the stillness and the steps. I loved watching our shadows and hand gestures as we all walked together. Some held their hands in prayer, close to the heart. Others clutched clunky shoulder bags. I held a wisdom mudra with thumbs touching index fingers, hoping to catch something good.

I was happy for the company of strangers. I’d left my spiritual circle years ago. I wondered about people’s reasons for walking. Some are ill, I thought. Others are suffering in other ways. Some, like me, are missing God.

As I walked in, when you are to let mindchatter fall away, all these characters and scenarios for a short story kept bubbling up. I noticed those ideas and focused on my feet in thick wool socks kissing the expertly laid terrazzo. Others wore shoes, and besides the Tibetan bowls and bells and the resonant long horn, I listened to the footfalls. The sounds echoed and bounced off the high cathedral ceiling. The silence wove in and out among us.

I remembered my friend Barbara telling me about Michael Bernard Beckwith, a spiritual teacher who reminds us to ask God how He/She/It wants to see itself in us. The answer I got, when I finally reached the center of the labyrinth, was Painting with Words. So here I am writing and thinking about cooking dinner.

Late to Laugh

LATE TO LAUGH
by Carol Harada

He always shows up late to laughing yoga, often sitting in his Jetta mustering up the strength to go into the church basement. Sometimes he tells himself it’s because churches creep him out. He’s avoided them ever since they showed that child molester cautionary tale in cub scouts at St. John’s Lutheran, where he hid with Tory Mancini below the pew. Here it’s too smoky outside, tobacco clouds loitering by the door long after the AA groups have come and gone. The laughing leader Mrs. Prabha Jhoti, a matronly woman in colorful salwar kameez and long hair in a tight bun, once said that Harvey had resistance. As if she’d invented the concept.

Harvey sighs at last, watching the second hand gather up the leaden minute hand and sweep it into 7 o’clock. He pockets the keys, slams the car door, church door, and himself into the folding metal chair. His bony ass gets cold right away. From her place up front Mrs. Jhoti flirtatiously winks at Harvey and nods to everyone else. Like a conductor, she rises and waves her arms down and up, beginning the opening movement of their symphony of laughter.

“Heh heh heh,” comes effortful belly barks from the guy in overalls. Then the shrieking peal of that skinny lady who teaches authentic movement, whatever that is. Despite the tangle of hair and the oversize glasses, she reminds Harvey of a little seen marsh bird making up for lost time. Her laugh line is perfectly supported by the roar of genuine hilarity from the tiniest, roundest, oldest man in the world. His long beard shakes and his gold teeth flash. There are others who start off with the “fake it until you are making it,” as Mrs. Jhoti says. The physiological benefits are sure to follow, she reassures.

And then there’s Harvey. Sometimes he can’t hear himself laugh, like tonight. He experiments with soundless laughing, turning the volume all the way down to zero point two five. Just puffs of air emanating from his tummy. By now they are all up out of the unfriendly chairs and walking, swaying, even knee slapping and stomping. Mrs. Jhoti comes by just then and giggles in his ear, which releases an image of Harvey’s dead friend Jake, waltzing like a circus bear around the hospital room. AIDS ward 1988. Another thrilling episode of Dementia Land. Harvey had trailed after Jake with the IV stand on more than one occasion. He had pretended back then that he really had gone to lunch with Frank Sinatra and The Jakester. Harvey still carries from that false memory the feel of his father’s homburg sitting rakishly on his head and the tingling of his lips when he’d played the blues harmonica for old Blue Eyes. Harvey loved those little adventures with Jake’s addled brain. They were vacations unplanned for, with no jetlag, at least for Harvey.

The jaws start to ache, his face goes numb, and Harvey can tell that about fifteen minutes of non-stop laughing has passed. He wants a cigarette and he doesn’t even smoke. Mrs. Jhoti waves her fingers and the laughter dies down until it sputters into silence. People don’t look at each other for fear of starting up again, some wipe their eyes, and almost everyone shuffles back for a cup of chai made without black tea.

Harvey sips the spicy goodness, and Mrs. Jhoti nudges him with a fat dimpled elbow. He nods and lets his mouth betray the faintest trace of curved satisfaction. They talk about the rescue cats she’s crazy about, and once more he declines her kind offer to find him some “good pussy”. He doesn’t have the heart to correct her English, enjoying her innocent Pakistani phrasing. Neither will he tell her that he is trying to keep the feeling, that burning hole in his side where Jake once fit like a neighboring jigsaw puzzle piece. He wants to, but does not say how hard it is to outlive the livest wire. And yet, somehow she knows about the decades. It’s in her obsidian eyes that glimmer like the sparkling trim on her tunic and pantaloons. Everything is there in the glowing darkness.

Love in Bolinas

LOVE IN BOLINAS by Carol Harada

I.

Surfers rise and fall
with the ocean’s noisy breathing
Bobbing blobs on surefooted boards

You stand out, your torso upright
Gaze grazing Hawaii
then on to the source of this wave
Back on shore I sit unseen,
one with the rocks crumbled from the cliff
Descended from the steep roped trail

You hailed a fast Manhattan cab
to the untamed coast of me
You’ve always looked west
You worship what’s coming

We ride the tides of love
Our seal bodies cavort wetly in bed
Sometimes, you tell me,
you have to go out,
meet the big wave.
Paddle out farther
than you think you should go.

I know the place,
out where things deepen and swell,
split into crash and curl

Your hands on my hips
heedless of sharks

Now you are up
Your agile joints roll smoothly in their sockets
Hips swivel and rock
I kama sutra multiple times
Your slender feet grip and point toward shore

I zag to the right and you spill over the top
dissolving into foam
After tumbling down the steep roped trail,
this falling is easy
The ocean takes you in and lifts you up
You walk out of the dying waves
I catch you,
evolving.

II.

My son
is the one
above all others
He spirals through the fibers of my heart
A labyrinth where none may follow

You suspect his secret name is tsunami
You dread the wipe-out ahead
Never been the father type,
so you say

Paddle out farther, my mantra
when I finally let you meet him

All my kid cares:
you surf and are willing
to teach him

I anchor the bobbingboard lesson from shore
Calming the waves with my ermine brush
The watercolor block steady on my lap
Each dip into pigment enriches the sea

I paint the creatures beneath the calm
surprised to find so many
With one swipe I wipe away jaws
and jellyfish
and dangerous riptides

I look up to see you
both on one board
rising upright on suction cup feet
I can almost hear your screams
as you make your way
through thick water.

III.

You confess one night,
I wish I’d been there
when you imagined yourself into waves
I recount how the midwife caught him,
slipping out between curl and crash

Surprised to hear your own meaning,
you call him
Your perfectly fatherless son

You always have moved forward
right into the way
that’s open before you

He drowsily murmurs:
The walls aren’t thick enough
I sink in shame and I rub his back
Mom, this one’s different
He treats me like an untested wave

My ears relax
You’re different too
You’re happy
I vow to get a white noise machine

I see you transmit
the boomerang, the spear, the buffalo hunt
You make the Frisbee zing look easy

My two men,
one coming of age,
the other coming to shore
Riding this next wave

One becomes two becomes three

Becomes one.

loving words

Hello, Dear Reader.

I love words and how they want to move together.

I love people and our quirks and twinkles that make us unique.

I love Presence, being in expectant stillness allowing what wants to come into being.

I love birthing characters through my hands, heart, and belly.

I’m happy to share them with you.

Blessings, Carol

Sumi on the Bluffs

SUMI ON THE BLUFFS, excerpt from Heart Medicine Bones

Exactly at ten, Kiku is back in her studio to throw some more.  I leave her there, toss some supplies in a backpack, and climb into my ancient dark green Volvo with the red racing stripe.  I give myself over to the day’s adventure, drinking in the delicious feeling of wheels in motion.  Even without plans I feel the pull of the ocean.

Driving Coleman Valley Road is one long roller coaster ride.  Once I’m above the woods, the sky opens up even more to me.  For once there are no sheep in the road, no gaggle of cyclists weaving and huffing.  I love the sad beauty of the falling down barns, wanting to save one and make it into a studio.  The redwood of these broken structures has taken on a silver gray sheen.   No doubt there still lingers a smell of horse, ducks, chickens.  As I climb up to the peak, I can see receding waves of valleys echoing to the south.  Further on, the deepening blue of the Pacific twinkles at me.

I decide to hike high above the beaches, on the bluffs with their isolated rock outcroppings.  The beach down at Goat Rock, where the Russian River mingles with the ocean, will be crowded today.  Besides, I’ve seen the harbor seals just last weekend, watched them for an hour or so as they sunned and swam.  One large silvery seal followed me as I walked down the beach.  Every time I looked over my left shoulder, it popped its shiny head out of the waves, and I swear it was looking straight at me.  Later near the parking lot, I found a worn bit of driftwood shaped like a seal, flippers moving down through clear water.

I keep the driftwood seal in my car now, along with the other sea and land artifacts I’ve collected over the years.  Only a select few make it inside to one of my impromptu altars, like the one in the old telephone niche in our hallway.  When I make turns too fast, the flotsam rustling across my dashboard reminds me to slow down.  Some pieces I intend to recycle, give back to the land as offerings.  This seems like a good thing to do today.  I pick a smooth, purple and black stone to carry with me.  I pull into the little dip by the gate at the trailhead.

Midday is hovering time for the birds of prey that roost on the serpentine rocks dotting these ranch lands.  I pick my way through blackberry canes, mallow, and yellow dock.  Then beach grass, then shorter, stubby plants.  It’s barely a path, more like a deer trail, and I try to skip, but have to dodge the poison oak that tries to catch me.  Once I’m in the scrub and ground cover, I run just to feel the power springing through my legs.  The wind feels good as it washes over the bare skin on my arms and thighs.

I follow my feet along the edge of the continent.  Then I am at this dip, half eroded but settling into mid-fall.  The earth has made a scoop, just big enough for me to lie down and face the ocean.  This bit of bluff is carpeted with tiny wildflowers.  Sea fig, something that looks like dandelion, and midget purple irises.  My kind of heaven.

I unfurl a narrow tatami picnic mat, which smells so good & grassy, and settle in for the afternoon, pulling my baseball cap down over my eyes.  As I look out and see nothing but sky, a feeling settles over me that everything will be fine.  No matter what Kiku says, this is an essential part of my creative life.  Just this.  One of my favorite poems, ‘The Gift’ by Milosz, captures this kind of moment.  It begins, “A day so happy….”  Once I saw him on television, reading half in Czech, half in thick English.  I want to know about his life, what kind of thing he survived to be able to see such simple beauty.  My own mother, known to the ceramics world for her inherently Japanese work, was forced to pretend she was Korean during the Second World War.  For two years she lived with friends of her family, often wearing a button that said, “We are Korean”.  Despite this dislocation, or because of it, my mother is Japanese to the bone.  She stayed a Takayama upon marriage.

Kiku was only a little one, so that time passed like a strange dream while she stayed with the Parks.  She has spoken of becoming Korean, as if it were a game.  But to this day she will not eat Korean food.  One time she tried some kimchee & barbecued pork leftovers I’d brought back from lunch.  A few minutes later she ran into the bathroom and threw up.  She was more embarrassed than anything else, claiming it was too spicy for her sensitive stomach.

I wonder what it was like for Kiku’s father and older-by-far brother.  How they must have enfolded the little impersonator upon their return from Heart Mountain.  Their hidden treasure.

I eat slices of green apple and rice cakes, doze a little too.  The water I’ve brought is cool and just right.  If I look behind me, I would see the cooper’s hawk hovering and looking back and forth for a sudden shadow, a darting rodent shape.  Hunger is basic, the passage from instinct to action.  If only I could move so easily when I paint, from inkling inside to color, shape, and story on the paper, I would be a happy woman.  I remember the stone in my pocket.

I look around and see a black beetle with orange diamonds on its back, very modern and prehistoric.  It heads towards this hollow in the dirt left by another stone, and when I stand my dashboard denizen there, it fits perfectly.  I thank the beetle, who goes up to the newly planted stone, waves some feelers tentatively, then goes around it.  Reunion, I think.  Out loud, I suddenly speak from my belly, “Wind Spirits, Earth, Water, and Fire.  Help me through this dry time with my art.  Even with Obaachan’s hands as a blessing, I need help to live up to this inheritance.  In return, I give you my faith.”  As I rise from a crouch and make a gesture of sweeping from my feet, up my body, and out to sea.  I had no idea what I was going to say until the words float over the cliff.

“Oh, yeah.  I almost forgot.  Please send my father to me.  I need to see him real bad.”  When I open my eyes I try to push aside the long hair whipping around and blocking my vision.  A soft flutter of black brushes my face then wings higher with a raspy cry.  It’s Raven, messenger to the other side.  I remember I haven’t had long hair in a while.  I shiver, though it’s not cold, watching the dark bird wheel over the bluff.

A MAN NEEDS A BICYCLE

A MAN NEEDS A BICYCLE by Carol Harada

Adam didn’t know what it was like to be a child.  He just appeared one day in the garden, out of God’s green wish.  He didn’t know how to play kickball or ride a bike.  He never lied to a teacher, never felt his face licked by flames.  He didn’t have any parents to blame in therapy.

So Adam went about half-formed.  And when Eve split into two again and again, the wet mewling things that came out from between her legs scared him.  They were much too tiny, and he wondered what was wrong with them.  But he’d seen the animals become two-as-one for a time.  Then the female would be two-as-one in another way.  The animal babies were also wet mewling things, so after a while Adam shrugged and guessed that this was the way of life.

The little things had big dimples on their fronts.  Eve rolled her eyes and said, “It’s a belly button.  They all have them.”  She borrowed a cat from the neighbors, burrowed into its fur and found the six barely there nipples and a very slight indentation.  She showed Adam, who with some back and forth of the one extended finger felt it too.  The cat wriggled and kicked and was free.  Adam lifted his t-shirt and Eve’s blouse and touched his blind belly to hers.  She sensed his sadness and let him stand there like that with her until one of the children wanted something.

When some of the great grandchildren made a bicycle, Adam thought it was time to learn how to ride.  Three little ones and two big ones held the bike while he got on.  The littlest one gave the best instructions:  “Keep pedaling and look where you want to go.”

It worked, and although he was due for a touch of arthritis, his strong legs nonetheless pumped on.  He looked at the Snake, who was dangling from the trees, laughing at this novel sight.  The bicycle crashed into those branches, and the Snake fell heavily on Adam’s head.

“Watch where you’re going, you oaf!  Take the child’s instructions literally!”  The Snake was unharmed but pretty peeved.  Adam didn’t know what “literally” meant, but mumbled his apologies.  The children unsnaked him and set him aright.

Every day Adam would pedal more.  He looked at where he wanted to go, and there he rolled.  An older child clued him in about looking down occasionally, just for a flash, to be sure he was on solid ground.  No longer did Adam get stuck in river mud or trapped by the forest roots that rose up out of the earth.

Eve was always busy with the family, but she and the Snake had enough time to snicker at Adam’s steep learning curve.  He’d show them!  One early morning he set out in a direction his head had never turned.  When he came to the gates, after a day of pedaling, it struck him that this place felt familiar.  It wasn’t like the cozy place that he and Eve had made with the thrift store couches and just enough milk crate bookshelves, but some place from Before.

The iron gates were locked, so Adam wheeled over to one side where he saw God hanging out, swinging in a hammock just on the other side of the barred fence.  Adam cleared his throat.  God opened one eye and lifted His head.

“Well, Adam, what have you got there?”  He seemed unsurprised, asking just to be polite.

“Oh, it’s a bicycle.  The great grandkids taught me how to ride.”

“You certainly can get around on that thing.  You must have been riding all day.”  Of course, God was right.

“Yeah.”  Adam got on and rode in a figure eight, just to show God how it worked.  God didn’t get out of the hammock, just propped Himself up into a better position to see.

Adam had an idea.  “Maybe I could take a spin in the Garden.  You know, for old time’s sake.”

God sat up and walked over to Adam, leaning against His side of the fence.  Adam straddled the bike, but came closer.  God took in all the centuries in Adam’s eyes, and shored up His own heart.  He had to be strong.

“I’m sorry, Adam.  That’s not gonna happen.”  God reached through the fence with that splendid finger and touched Adam where his navel was not.  He turned and went back to the hammock and leapt into its embrace.

“Goodbye, Adam.  Say hello to Eve for me.”

But Adam was already pumping his legs to start the wheels rolling.  One hand rested on his belly, the other on the handle of the bike.  He didn’t need to look down to know that his belly was still smooth.  Besides, he needed to watch where he was going.  He hoped he remembered the way home.