I Never Learned How To Ride A Bicycle

True story! There is actually a sad reasoning behind it. The summer between second and third grade my grandpa was up visiting and teaching me how to ride a bike. I thought finally! Up until that point I would walk alongside my friends while they rode their bikes or drag along behind in my red radio flyer wagon. You remember those right? I was the only one still with training wheels on my bike which was the equivalent of wearing diapers as far as I was concerned; something for babies NOT an eight year old.

After a particularly brutal August afternoon that involved my grandpa doing some yard work at my house he went downstairs to take a nap. My dad told me to go get him because it was time to take him back into the city (where he lived). Eight year old me hopped down the stairs to the family room where my grandpa peacefully slept in the recliner. The problem was that I couldn't wake him up. My dad chalked it up to me trying too gently, but he couldn't wake grandpa up either. No one could. In his sleep he had died right there in the recliner of my family room.

Maybe it seems silly more than twenty years later, but I still associate learning to ride a bike with my grandfather and his death even though the two are completely unrelated. It's not as if I never tried again: once with my dad after college and once with my now husband a couple years after that. I just couldn't keep my balance. Later I was told I had an inner ear issue that made balancing a particularly difficult thing for me so in reality I may never be able to ride a bike.

Some people might say "What's the point? You're older now, you have a license and a car." But it's not about riding into town with my friends anymore, it's about being able to do something I haven't been able to do before. I want to learn to ride a bike for me, no other reason other than to prove I can do it. My entire life people have been imposing limitations on me: not pretty enough, not smart enough, not thin enough, not cool enough, not good enough. This is something I just have to do. I need to finish what I started with my grandpa more than two decades ago.

When the spring comes, in Albany that's usually sometime in May/June, I'm dusting the cobwebs off my damn bike and going for it. Honestly what's the worst that can happen? I fall? It's like that song by the late Aaliyah "If at first you don't succeed, dust yourself off and try again".