And on one such day, the bridge was lowered, and we, with our parents at our sides, marched over the moat and followed the carved trail that brought its wanderer closer to civilization. Of course, I knew civilization was not our destination, but I was left with no other clues as to determine what the true objective was. So I walked on with a smiling soul, the dancing shadows tickling my arms as seeds with their feathered parasails drifted about us in an allergy-sufferer’s nightmare. I don’t recall whether or not Ray, with his hypersensitive sinuses, had sneezed or sniffed loudly as we continued on down the road, our sandals crunching the gravel deeper into the earth. Perhaps he had signed a truce with the pollen that day. Emily, Jeff, and Ray – all three of them had hands on the twisted metal contraptions known to man as bicycles. I had to say the word slowly and with care, for I hadn’t used it very often. “Bicycle…bike.” The bicycles weren’t heavy enough to crunch the gravel into the ground, as we humans had been able to do, so they merely flung it behind them as their massive, off road tires spun around to match our stride. My mother and I, with no bikes to manage, were left with an awkward nothingness to hold onto. Our hands were left to seek out the delicious darkness of our pockets or the embrace of another hand. Thus, we five wanderers slowly moved forward, farther and farther from our moat-encircled castle.
About a mile from the base of the
trail, past a black mailbox that I don’t think served us with mail at any point
during our stay, we arrived at a gradual turn in the road marked with short,
wooden pillars. The gravel-covered earth
had given way to a sloping, paved road.
The latter had a kind of arrogance about it – no doubt due to its
decision to conquer nature rather than become “one” with it, as the gravel
trail had done. But it was hard for me
not to laugh at this arrogance, because the road was cracked and eroded with
the same forces that it tried to suppress, roots from some unknown plant poking
out between its innards. Walking onto
this road, we exchanged our parasailing seeds and friendly shadows for the warm
heat of sunlight on our backs. Beyond
the pillars stretched a field of clover and soft, mowed grass, and beyond this
field another paved, cracked road that stretched in a winding fashion
perpendicular to the one we walked on.
The surrounding trees whispered with casual talk of noontime as we
slowly approached the turn and absorbed the sights of this manmade island among
the forest. And then I came to realize
that this was our destination of the moment.
We five wanderers had immediately ceased to wander.
The three of us, with high spirits
of the shaking lips and flying spit, immediately discovered that the wooden
pillars made fantastic steppingstones. One
of us would start on one end of the curved row and proceed to jump from one
jutting structure to the next, which turned out to be simply a series of logs
propped upward as if they were stout little trees. Only those who could get from the starting
end of the row to the other without falling were truly worthy, and it was a
tricky task, as we soon found out. Some
of the logs had been driven into the ground at an angle – a test indeed for the
flailing arms that somehow proved to keep us upright. But soon, our short attention spans got the
best of us, and my comrades left me to sit by myself on an angled pillar,
running away from the row of tree bodies with an irrepressible hunger to blaze
the pavement with their twisted metal and wheels. But it didn’t faze me much, seeing as it had
been this way for as long as I could remember.
The neighborhood kids would enjoy this outdoor luxury while I sat
inside, out of the sun, drawing and talking to myself into a tape recorder. “Who needs bikes anyway?” I’d say to
myself. But in the back of my mind I
couldn’t help but feel excluded. That
week in the Adirondacks included the day of my eleventh birthday. I was going to be eleven years old. Eleven and still I was unable to ride
a bike. It just didn’t seem normal, or
“cool” for that matter.
My dad had tried to teach my once,
in an empty parking lot on a sunny day.
And when I had positioned myself on top of the contraption, I had looked
very professional indeed. The
pink bike with its white tires and training wheels, the long, flowing ribbons
of brightly colored plastic bursting from the handlebars, and the twenty beads
that knocked around the spokes of the bike’s wheels, making a characteristic
tapping noise of what my mother and I liked to call the “spokey-dokeys”. To the casual observer, I was a kid who had
mastered the trade. To my father, I was
a scared, irrational fool on wheels.
After a certain point of having to deal with my constant high-pitched
complaints and refusals to put my feet on the pedals or “trust him” to hold me
upright, my dad stopped offering to teach me how to master the bicycle. No doubt he found the squirming butt of its
“professional” rider to be a considerable impediment. And I was glad that I wasn’t being forced to
risk my life anymore. “Who needs bikes
anyway?” I would walk the pink thing up
and down the driveway merely for the sake of hearing the doink-doink of
the “spokey-dokeys”.
Unfortunately, I had not realized how crucial
this life skill was to the future of my youth.
Yes, it was a fundamental talent, much like the ability to play soccer
or own the newest Barbie doll, and I didn’t have it. So, as one might expect, through sixth grade
I became a sort of social misfit. But,
that’s not to say that I wasn’t a clever one.
“Want to come ride bikes with us?” they would ask. “Oh, my bike is broken,” I’d say, or “it’s in
the attic.” I was the only one who knew
the solution to the riddle – that the pink bike was the only bike I had ever
owned and that my house didn’t even have an attic. As I got older, though, my attempt to keep
the scandalous secret from others became more and more difficult. I remember that shortly following my move to
New Jersey, I was encountered with an offer to ride someone else’s metal
and wheels. “My bike is broken” wouldn’t
suffice in a time like this. What was I
to do? An ingenious solution indeed – I
ran all the way home to get my roller blades.
Sure it was a mile both ways, but my secret was safe. Of course, I think my friends knew what was
really going on, even though no one ever mentioned anything, and it was at that
point when I finally started wanting to learn – I wasn’t afraid of
risking my life anymore. I didn’t care,
actually. But it was too late. Certainly my father wasn’t going to drive through
two states just to administer bike riding services.
My eleventh birthday – that’s when
Ray stepped in. “She’s going to learn
how to ride,” he told my mother at the beginning of the week, “whether she
wants to or not.” What a guy, that
Ray. And with two other children who
knew the trade, he had to be an experienced bike master. It was Ray who saw my solo act on the angled
pillar as a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Like a grade school teacher in the midst of “inappropriate” language, he
pounced at the prospect of reform.
“All right, Leezie, get on the
bike,” he shouted, or something to that effect, his demeanor a peculiar cross
between amusement and authority. And as
that man walked calmly towards me with the metal contraption rolling along beside
him, the whispering trees paused in their conversations, hundreds of wooden
bodies bending forward with a sudden gust of wind. I had somehow acquired the forest’s undivided
attention; it was a pity I couldn’t think of anything clever to say. Not that it made much of a difference given
that Ray wasn’t looking for an answer, and I could see that my mother was
headed in my direction, moving faster than she usually moved. It was her gaping smile that told me there
would be no avoiding this matter. This
was it – I was cornered. But then again,
hadn’t I been anxiously waiting for this moment?
The bike seat was squishy and molded
itself to my back end, ridding me of my ability to squirm. Of course, a few adjustments had to be made
in order for the handlebars to accommodate my eleven-year-old body, but there
was no need for worry seeing as Ray was blessed with the ability to pull
wrenches and other such oddities right out of the fresh summer air. And there she was - the professional had
returned in all her glory, and in this very special performance she would be
gracing the audience with an unexpected change in routine. The trees applauded my remarkable transition
from training wheels and “spokey-dokeys” to a pair of rusty shocks and
hard-core tire treads. I felt compelled
to inform them that such a transition had never actually taken place. Meanwhile, Emily and Jeff indulged themselves
with prancing about my wheels with the odd merriment of a long-awaited ritual.
“Don’t take your hands off the
brakes!” one of them declared with an air of experience. “Just keep going straight – whatever you do, don’t
turn!” The other joined in and soon
their voices jumbled together with the forest’s praise. My heart climbed up into my throat, making it
impossible to breathe efficiently. Ray
was beginning to push the bike and its panicky rider over towards a long,
rolling slope in the cracked road. I had
been informed that this was the way to learn.
First, one had to establish balance by using gravity to pull them downhill,
legs out to the side like the long pole of a tightrope walker. Interestingly enough, one didn’t simply turn
the handlebars when they wanted to move left or right, but rather their entire
body. This revolutionary idea surely
explained certain distressing failures in an empty parking lot not too long
ago…The bike master steadied the device by placing one of his hands on the back
of the squishy seat. His tall, lean form
was hunched over mine, a crude but pleasant shield from the numbing
sunlight. By now the ovation of the many
“casual observers” had gradually given way to my own jagged breaths. I was instructed to lift my feet away from
the earth. The bicycle wobbled slightly
as my left shoe took flight.
“Ready?”My right foot kicked off from the ground and the bike staggered forward, its tires flinging up the root-laden innards of the cracked pavement.
