It’s August and I really wish I knew where the heck my gloves are.

Yup, you read that right. I’m smack dab in the middle of real Rangeley summer, those few precious days when I can confidently expose both my lower and upper extremities. At the same time. Outdoors. For more than a half hour. And I can do so while immersing myself in my favorite thing this side of the lake: logging endless miles on my mountain trike as long and as fast as I can before darker days descend again. Still, here I am, peddling into the glorious wild blue and green yonder, thinking about my goddamn gloves.

As in hand-warming, protection against snow and ice gloves, not the gardening gloves or fall cleaning gloves I should be thinking about this time of year. And not Prada or some other pricey mail order label that ceases to be “the thing to wear next season” the minute it arrives at my log cabin post office in Oquossoc. I’m obsessing over a plain, black pair of gloves. The ones I bought at Reny’s for $14.99. The ones I’ve been missing all summer.

Last time I remembered seeing them was back in May. As in “May I please put away my gloves, and everything fleece, especially that headband that makes my regular ball cap hat head look like a good hair day?” They were in my bike sack which, by Memorial Day, looked like the sale bin at L.L. Cote. (You know, the one that’s right inside the entryway that you try to walk around but can’t resist pawing through the huge cluster snarl of chartreuse neck warmers and last season’s triple extra-large t-shirts people didn’t even want to buy to wear doing yard chores?) If I dug deep, I could unearth my black gloves to keep my fingers from freezing to my handle bars when not-quite-spring tried to turn into maybe-summer. Then I’d move ’em with me because they weren’t just for biking. These were my utilitarian, almost-all-weather pair—my go-to gloves for wherever I went. Lightweight, portable and nearly waterproof, I could carry them in the front pouch of my ancient windbreaker like a Mooselook marsupial, or pocket them in one of my fleeces, padding my pre-bike season flab with little glove love handles.

But, just as I dared to think I might not have to keep them “on hand” in all my travels, the gloves went missing. I set out to shift them to one of my other winter waiting spots and poof…the gloves just weren’t there to transport. Not in my bike sack, or my pockets. Not anywhere anymore.

“It’s OK,” I said. “You don’t need them, not right now, anyways. And by the time you do, they’ll turn up.” It was June, the first day of full-blown Rangeley summer. Not seems-like-summer or June-uary or “I have more goose bumps than common sense for putting on shorts this morning.” It was biking weather worthy of all my winter daydreams. Temps in the high seventies all day. Bluebird skies. Balmy breezes. So why was I laser focused on not having gloves in my bike sack “just in case” rather than on the lupine-lined road ahead?

Because I’m called Fidget for good reason. As in “Fidget: To make small movements, especially of the hands and feet, through nervousness or impatience.” Tom bestowed the nickname somewhat affectionately when we first met and he decided to make the verb into a proper noun just for me. Fidget is all about business—her’s and everyone else’s. She frets over schedules, dust particles, paperwork, whether or not she can drink all the milk in the gallon before the “best used by” date, and cheap gloves. If I let her, she’d take over my whole program. But, thanks to the Big Move to Rangeley and wanting to do more with my retirement than fiddle about the house, another side of my self has emerged to keep Fidget in line. She’s an easy-going, free wheeling, tie-dyed Zen Momma I like to call Joyride.

Joyride doesn’t sweat the small stuff. To her, cheap gloves and fidgety crap like that is all small stuff. She’s too busy flying around on mega-coasters or easin’ on down the road to care or listen. She held her own pretty good, too, for most of July, basking in each glove-less moment, looking lovingly at my naked hands on the handle bars and appreciating how daily exposure was transforming their “Nana skin” from winter crepey white to sun-toasted marshmallow gold.

Try as I might, though, my pedaling meditation was still being hijacked. The thought of gloves magically reappearing kept buzzing around my brain like a pesky house fly that just wouldn’t leave the room. Should I look in my bike sack again? How ’bout Tom’s? In my pockets? In the vast vortex of irretrievable items under the Subaru seats? In that dank creepy space above the basement steps or the cold weather baskets I kept pawing through like a frantic squirrel? Had they flipped off my lap in a parking lot, or unintentionally been dropped into the recycling bin where they’d soon be found at the “Rangeley Plantation Walmart” by some lucky Flatlander? Was one of my girls really desperate for gloves the last time she visited?

While my Joyride side soaked up every drop of July sunshine, the Fidget in me knew that, at any moment, July in Rangeley could turn into “but Ju-LIE.” As in when visitors say, “You told me I wouldn’t need warm socks up here this time of year, but Ju-LIE!”

Without my precious gloves, I feared that even August could become “but Ah guessed” overnight. As in “Ah guessed it would stay summery in Rangeley by now, but Ah-guessed wrong.” Then, mid-trail one day, it hit me. I was ONLY worrying about gloves! Both sides of my brain did some sort of harmonic convergence and drummed that into my psyche louder than the grouse I’d just flushed into the woods. I was having the best summer of my life with nothing better to fidget over than a stupid pair of gloves! No work deadlines or unmet milestones pulling me back inside till I was good and ready. No health issues or house projects from hell. No family drama or maternal misery. Both my daughters were doing OK. Better than OK, actually. They were thriving. At the same time. And my husband? Well he was all that a a girl named Fidget could ever hope for in an adventure buddy/camp compadre and then some.

Whoever said that our greatest blessings are also our greatest curses probably wasn’t talking about gloves. But, in my case, it fits. Now when my silly gloves come to mind, I don’t get mad. I’m glad they went missing. And as long as they come out of gestation or I get to Reny’s for a new pair by Septem-BRRRR, I’m good.