On Old Friends, Unspoken Years, and the Bicycle Trailer I’ll Probably Never Use
A man once told me
you never forget the sound of a long road
when your mind is quiet enough to hear it.
We were supposed to leave at 3:30. I remember glancing at the clock on my kitchen wall, how the minute hand seemed to linger longer than usual, how the seconds fell like stones into a pool I couldn’t quite see the bottom of. We left at 4.
The delay didn’t bother either of us.
He arrived with two coffees and an old windbreaker, the kind with a faded logo that looked like it belonged to a marathon he never mentioned running. The dog hopped into the back seat like it had been waiting for this drive its whole life.
Spring had only just arrived—not on the calendar, but in the air, in the way the sunlight no longer felt clinical, in the smell of thawed earth rising from the roadside. You could hear it in the sound of birds trying out songs they had forgotten over winter, in the way trees looked unsure whether to bud or wait another day.
We were heading out to pick up an old 1950 bicycle trailer—an Anhänger—a word that always felt heavier in German, as if the object itself knew it had been built to carry something more than just weight. I had no use for it, really. I didn’t even ride often anymore. But it reminded me of something. Or someone. Or a feeling that hadn’t fully taken shape. And so, I went.
What We Talk About On The Way
We didn’t fall into conversation right away. There’s a certain grace in knowing someone long enough that silence doesn’t press against your ribs.
The road stretched ahead like a long, thin sentence you weren’t in a rush to finish. Eventually, he started telling me about his son—his first—who had just received his college acceptance. He said it like it had just occurred to him, as if saying it aloud made it more real. There was a pause after that. The kind that isn’t uncomfortable, just heavy. Like a snow-laden branch waiting to release.
He had two kids now. I hadn’t realized. Time does that—it accumulates in the corners of people’s lives while you’re busy managing your own. He told me how the younger one was into swimming, not competitively, just every week, like a rhythm. The older one wanted to study architecture. Something about buildings that stayed standing even after people left them.
I told him I didn’t have kids. Not yet. Maybe someday. I don’t know if I said it to explain or to excuse, but he didn’t ask. Just nodded like he understood something I hadn’t figured out how to name.
The Man Who Wasn’t There
When we reached the house, it was nearly dusk. The kind of dusk that folds in rather than falls. The trailer sat quietly behind the building, half-shadowed, but dignified. You could tell it had been restored with care—not perfection, but care. The wood had been sanded and resealed, the hinges replaced, the wheels balanced. It looked like something that had stopped waiting and was ready to begin again.
There was no one to greet us. Just a note taped to the door with clean handwriting that read:
“Trailer’s out back. Leave the money in the postbox. Hope it finds the right road.”
I folded the bills without counting. Dropped them through the slit.
Lifted the trailer into the car.
And that was it.
The transaction was done in silence. And somehow, that made it more honest.
On the Way Back, the Sky Forgot to End
It was darker on the return.
The sun had already disappeared into the fields behind us, leaving a thin seam of gold across the tops of distant barns. He talked more this time. About ski jumping—how he used to watch competitions with his dad, how it always felt more like falling with style than actual flight. About the way his daughter had started cooking, real food, the kind you have to fail a few times before it makes sense. About how strange it is to raise people who don’t belong to you anymore by the time you really understand them.
I listened.
Not because I had anything to add,
but because some stories only need an open road
and someone not looking directly at you.
The dog was asleep now, curled like a comma in the sentence we hadn’t finished. I watched the lights smear past the window like old memories being pulled out of focus.
Wabi-Sabi and the Weight We Choose
The trailer doesn’t serve a purpose in my daily life.
I haven’t used it.
I may never use it.
And yet, I’m glad it’s here.
It creaks a little when I move it.
The wood has tiny flaws, places where the grain refuses to behave.
It smells faintly of oil and time.
And it reminds me—without trying—that not everything has to be practical to be worth keeping.
There’s something quietly sacred in bringing home a thing that serves no purpose except memory.
Wabi-sabi lives in that kind of object.
In the choice to keep something simply because it reminds you of what it means to care.
The Drive That Meant More Than Its Destination
- Sometimes, the most beautiful moments happen when no one is watching—not even you.
- Long drives soften the edges between people. You don’t talk to fill space. You talk to remember how to belong.
- Not having something—kids, certainty, a clear plan—doesn’t mean you’re missing anything. It just means your life’s sentences are still unfolding.
- The object isn’t the point. The road is.
- What you bring back might sit quietly in your garage.
But the conversation will echo longer than you expect.
If this story met you on a quiet part of your own road, share it.
Someone else might be waiting for a reason to go—not to find anything new,
but to rediscover something old,
something quiet,
something they almost forgot was still alive inside them.
life 