I bought myself a bike. It is blue, it is easy to lift, it has a straight handlebar, and a bell. I have a friend in town who bikes, and is nervous, as I am, about cars and even about biking, and she agreed to come by on Sunday morning to pick me up for a very short ride with no hills. Because I was so pleased with my bike, and with myself, for having a bike and riding it, I had David take a picture of me standing by my bike, wearing a helmet and the pants I bought last summer, when David, Henry, John and I were in Vancouver, and the boys had said, firmly, that they didn’t want to ride in Stanley Park, so I dressed for the day’s activities as if we were not bike riding in Stanley Park, but when we got, with some effort, to Stanley Park, everyone decided they did want to go bike riding in Stanley Park, and I had to buy a pair of pants in the running store next to the bike rental shop, so that we could go bike riding in Stanley Park.

Then, of course, I didn’t go riding in Stanley Park. Henry and I rented the bike, walked it through traffic, maneuvered it onto the very busy bike path, and biked almost to Stanley Park, when Henry said, Mom, I don’t want to ride this stupid bike. And because the last time Henry and I rode on a bike together he was hit by a car—he was basically all right, but all of us were shaken—and because I had recently sprained my ankle and was scared of bike riding, myself, we got off the bike and walked it back up the hill to the rental shop. Then, while John and David rode in Stanley Park, Henry and I moped around the entrance to Stanley Park, sitting on different benches and feeling frustrated about the fact that the world isn’t what other people make of it, and even though things seem like they will be nice things to do, and might be nice things to do, they are still things we’re not going to do.

It’s actually funny, really, that I like my new blue bike so much. I love it. I’ve gone to look at it in the garage a couple times, when I wasn’t even taking it out. I held this photo session with David. I'm afraid of certain physical activities, and I mistrust speed, so the only explanation I can offer is that while other people may enjoy biking for the freedom it promises, the speed, and the physical accomplishment, I love my new bike because I know that when things get hard, I'm going to walk it up the hill.

It’s very civilized here. The houses have small lawns, in the back, and the small lawns back onto each other. Sunday we walked down the street to our neighbor’s house for a block party, during which we sat in the back yard on chairs under the trees with a view of everyone else’s backyard stretching down into the distance. Music played, the host passed out glasses of iced coffee sweetened with sugar and milk, and the children shot each other with water guns. This was very civilized, as well. Civilizations make war, of course, but I meant more that water guns were a good way, on a warm spring morning, to cool each other off. And water guns distracted the children, so the adults could talk.

Talk turned to the fox. There was a fox among us, in our back yards, killing squirrels, and causing the dogs down our row of back yards to bark. Our hostess had been feeding her children breakfast one morning when the fox had appeared in her yard, stalked and killed a squirrel, and started to tear it apart. When she opened her back door and asked it to go it picked up the carcass and trotted off. What a nice fox, everyone said. Clean and polite. Not like the squirrels, which eat crocus bulbs by the hundred. Not like coyotes, which live farther north, and will eat decent-sized dogs.

That was Sunday, and on Monday the four of us got into the car to drop Henry at school, then David at the train, then Johnny at school. Henry’s school is close by, almost directly behind our house, and as soon as we dropped Henry off we heard crows yelling and saw the fox, our fox, brown and silver, being chased by three crows. We were running late, but we stopped to shoo the crows off, and to offer the fox a ride. The fox accepted, hopping into the back and riding along as far as the little woods that runs by the parkway, where he said goodbye. I do hope we see him again. The crows are a nuisance, and do terrible things to the tomatoes, but as far as I’m concerned, the fox is a friend.