Angle

A berry of many names

To eat June berries on the first of July requires trust. Trust in Bike Share Toronto. Trust in the people of Canada on their day. Trust in the weather. Trust in all that happens.

We headed to Cherry beach, Nasim on her eight speed Trek, and I on the three speed city bike. The first one I pulled from the rack had only one speed, so that I pedaled with legs like the spin of egg beaters while getting nowhere. With these bikes you had to get somewhere, to another rack every half hour, or they hit you for four dollars. 

The rain started. People headed to Lakeshore, pulling wagons and speaking different languages. They wore T-shirts and caps with maple leafs. We got to Cherry Beach ten minutes before the first half hour would expire. The bike station was out of order.  

The rain came down harder.

For our next attempt, we walked to Unwin Street, a name I’m not making up, but the bike station could not be seen. 

“We need some shelter,” she said.

I looked for an awning or an overhang of a building. 

“That tree.” I followed her to the corner of Unwin and Cherry. “55 Unwin,” she said, looking at the app on her phone.

I almost convinced her, this woman who as a young girl disguised herself as a boy and rode through the streets of Iran, to ride on the handlebars. We went back and forth in our discussion of safety. 

She got on the seat. 

I stood and pedaled us through the falling rain to a spot where the first unkind lady I’d met all my time in Canada, at the entrance to a waste treatment plant, where the bike rack should have been, said, “No trespassing.”

We carried on. 

Kids and parents played soccer on astroturf fields. We walked past and into a canopy of trees back by the trails. In the safety of this overhang, Nasim agreed to ride on the handlebars. Two grown ups riding like two teenagers, giggling and laughing around curves and bends and cyclists approaching us from the other side. 

We found a tree of sour apples not yet ripe. We saw a yellow bird fly into the thickets. Purple flowers. I noticed chicory. She said she knew she would never be bored with me. And we rode until we thought there might be another spot. 

Tommy Thompson Park. Same story. Bike Share Toronto would not have anybody but Canadians with a pass riding their bikes on Canada Day.

And another stop without luck. And another. And another. Until we came up to an expansive waste treatment plant surrounded by trees. 

A man and his daughter picked the same purple berries we had been eating and wondering about all week. He told us they were called serviceberries. We picked our fill and then I got a Starbucks cup and picked more for seeds to plant in New Orleans.

“Maybe this is what was supposed to happen,” Nasim said.

“What if we looked at all of life like this?” 

She took my arm. “The little girl is crying.”

I looked at the girl. She sat with her arms folded over her knees under the canopy of serviceberry. Her father's voice was loud and angry. A brother I hadn’t known was there sat nearby and spoke to her slowly. He patted her head. She stay with arms folded, and you could feel he had done this before.

“He’s so sweet,” Nasim said.

“He’s probably saying, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be back at mom’s soon. And we won’t have to see him for a week.’”

Nothing mattered to the father but more berries. 

And we walked on, into Queen Street East where different spots reminded me of different spots: Atlanta and Austin and around Ocean Beach in San Diego. We ate Georgian food. We tried another three racks without luck.

Our failed attempts to get a bike and the need to drag around hers discouraged us from going on further and deeper into this interesting neighborhood in the East End. We decided to take the streetcar to go home. 

Then, near a park where the houses looked like those of a neighborhood, and the condos did not rise so high, a Bike Share Toronto van waited. I made the universal signal of roll down the window.

A man took an earbud out of his ear. 

“You know why none of the stations are working?” I asked.

“I just replace broken bikes,” he said, throwing up his hand.

“It’s made for an interesting day,” I said. “We must have hit eight stations.” I was friendly, kind, laughing, for it seemed not to be his fault and there was nothing he could do.

I tried this last station, expecting nothing. But a code came up. Then he came out of the van.

He said, “How about I give you a bike? Just between us.”

He opened the back door. Lowered down a bike.

“We don’t have to stop every half hour?” I asked. 

“No.”

“As long as it’s locked by the end of the night?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Thank you. I’m Zach. What’s your name?”

He told me his name. I will keep it between us. 

And we rode on to more serviceberries, no worries about timelines, freely riding through the streets of familiarity in a place I had never been and to a tree with bigger berries, berries between the size of the service and the sour apple from the path.

A bedraggled man sat on a bench. I asked if he knew what these berries were. 

“Crab apples,” he said. “Lots of people don’t eat them raw. They say they’re too sour. But, you know,  you can put them in pies.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You have a beautiful rest of your day.”

“”You too.”

And we did.