Still Wobbling Ahead
At this moment it is raining outside, a gentle, soaking rain. I am pleased. Destructive weather notwithstanding, our planet is warming after all; at times a day or two of steady rain comes. A rain which gradually lends moisture to vegetation and to all that lives. To all things really. Water is life.
Yesterday I wrote of accompanying my grand daughter on a bike ride to school. She is in the beginning phase of learning to keep her balance on a bicycle.
Can you imagine the experience of riding the first bicycle? Granted the first iteration of the bicycle was crude. What mattered was the counter intuitive ability of keeping balance as your legs propel the body efficiently forward. It is understandable that bicycling continues to be magical at many levels, enjoyed by millions around the world.
I can remember learning to ride a bicycle. In my case this was a social activity. It was a Christmas gift I think. My bicycle was a increase of freedom, the expansion of space and time for play and exploration. The bicycle was an interruption of my world, previously limited to my yard, and a block or so away. That bicycle entailed adventures which would happen miles distant.
My Dad coached me to learn to ride the bike. I recall practicing in the school yard, the bicycle and I pushed from behind while he steadied my wobbling effort to remain erect. I fell more than once. I understand now that failure is endemic to learning anything. We fail to fail “better” the next time that we try…
And that first time, a first time when the body, with involuntary reflex – is moved and moves the bicycle forward, stands even now – a glimpse of paradise, delight coming as a gift.
One thought on “Still Wobbling Ahead”
For me, there was a second epiphany with regard to riding a bicycle. That was the moment I was able to take my hands off of the handlebars and sail through the air, untethered. It was indeed a magical moment, as if some unseen hand was guiding my efforts at moving across the plain of the earth. Riding a bicycle was somewhat like cutting the umbilical cord and finding a new freedom that is beyond the realm of verbal description.
My father taught me how to ride a bicycle in much the same way some fathers will throw a child into water to teach them how to swim. And so I offer a poem, written many years ago, about that moment in my life.
Without a Net
Poised and petrified,
certain that death
lay in wait
at the bottom of the hill.
Heroic pride’s
inevitable fate
rang crystal clear.
There was no choice,
for destiny called.
One deep breath,
and my father
released his hold.
Plummeting down
the pock marked blacktop
of that empty parking lot,
speed and terror mounted
as the unforgiving wind
whipped my face.
The turn; impossible
without exploding
into a thousand
broken fragments
of embarrassed failure.
“Lean into it, lean!”
I heard him shout,
from atop the hill.
Still, twenty feet ‘til doom.
“Lean into what?,” I wondered.
The Turn.
His voice echoing from memory.
So I did,
and the bicycle arced
to the left as if by magic.
I began to slow,
exhilaration blurring
the notion of pedaling.
But soon I remembered,
and pedaled and raced
with every part of me,
across the wide open pavement.
I had sprouted wings
and as the freedom of childhood
rushed into my life
I could hear my father laughing
from a million miles away.