My Friend, Jean

This is the story of how I met our guest, Emily's mom and dad.

It was March of 2007, one month after I'd gotten both of my thyroids removed. 

"Look at this great bike tour of the Netherlands," said Art.

"No," I told him.  "I haven't been on a bike in 30 years.  There's no way I can ride around a foreign country on a bike!"

"Just imagine riding around the countryside full of tulips.  Look at all these photos," he enthused.

Eventually... after promises that he'd watch over me, I agreed.  He made sure I had padded shorts, padded seats, helmets, and gloves.

We got to Amsterdam and boarded our barge where we were fitted onto bikes that would be the proper size.  Then we took a night-time ride over dikes in the twilight.  To say I was frightened, unbalanced and nervous is putting it mildly, but we met a lot of very nice people.

Keukenhof Gardens

We didn't see tulips all around the countryside as we expected, but they were there in profusion at Keukenhof gardens.

Soon it was obvious that there was a group of experienced and inexperienced bikers.

Art joined the experienced group and was soon delegated the sweep to make sure nobody lagged in that group.

I stayed with the slow group, petrified of falling off the bike, petrified of falling onto semis that were traveling on the same road, petrified of hitting my tire on the curb and falling.  I was unhappy, but kept it to myself.  That was when I met Jean.  She's a teacher too and picked up on the fact that I needed help and stuck by me.  She would ride behind me has we pedaled up a hill saying, "Yae, Kay!  You're doing great!" 

At the end of each day, I lied and told Art I was doing fine... even that day when our group got lost and we ended up riding 61 kilometers (about 38 miles)!

Believe it or not, that other couple in this photo happened to be from Hawaii.

That's Jean holding me upright.

I remember one day when we came toward a town and Jean hit a curb, fell hard and was injured.  The first thing she did was come to me (with her knees bleeding) and ask if I was alright and if she had caused a problem for me since I was following behind her.

Mike, Art, Jean and me

Here we are with Jean and her husband, Mike in Dordrecht.  The tour also took us into Belgium.

Art and I later spent more time in Amsterdam on our own and had a marvelous time.

We returned to Chicago happily.

And that's when something went wrong.  While working on our photo album, the stress of the bike ride and being left to fend on my own came back to me and something in my brain went askew.  I couldn't seem to shake it.  I was depressed, angry, upset and miserable.  I took walks, even jogged a little to try to escape the darkness.

Jean and I wrote long e-mails to each other and she tried to help me get myself together.  Her e-mails gave me an anchor.

And then my son, Jon called and for some reason, something he said took the cloud off of my head.  I wish I wrote down what he said.  He jokes now that he must have said, "Suck it up, Mom!"  Whatever it was, the sun seemed to come out.

It's still a mystery why I went through that phase.  Was it just the stress from the bike rides?  Could it have been an imbalance in my hormones since the trip was only a couple of months after my thyroid surgery?  Was it menopause?   I don't know.  I just know I entered a dark part of my mind and feared not being able to find my way out.

Jean and Jon took both my hands and pulled me out into the sunshine again so I could once again remember the tulips with a smile.