Teaching a man to ride a bike

Teaching a man to ride a bike 

My resolution is pretty good. My memory card is organic. I framed her image in the window of the bike shop on Delaware. Her fingers went through her hair – light brown, soft – I had held it for a lingering moment when her arm couldn’t reach her collar. She had ridden last year and accidentally tumbled onto her head and shoulder on the bike trail below the levee months ago. Later while she had been abroad, her bike had been stolen. She was picking up a new used one. Now, as I watched, she pulled her hair tight and thick into a bundle in one hand, the other hand manipulated a rubber band in her fingers as if she had done it a thousand times before.

I watched her carefully as she turned to face me, one strand slipping away from her pony tail like in thousands of pony tails I had looked at before. It’s physics I tell you – the way they bob and swing, the wind the familiar force that makes the tail end of the hair flutter. This wasn’t physics.

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. My heart must have been beating, but I didn’t notice. The baker had asked me if she were my daughter. My imagination had not stopped hoping since we had finished the coffee and pastries and walked to the bike shop. My resolution isn’t as good as I’d like, but I don’t want a new camera for Christmas. What I want is for what I want – mostly I want to have what I have and always to want more than I can have.

We rode across the bridge together. From in front of her I looked out at the sun on the river. The day could hardly have been brighter. I could see quite clearly her joy entering my mind, the wind in her face, her voice, carrying as far as my ears. She was simply so happy to be riding her new bike. I suppose I will have to refresh my image of her pony tail, but that is not what I am trying to tell you about.

How could I have known what I wanted before I saw someone else’s daughter in a coffee shop more than a year ago. And the look in her eye as she looked at me? It was more than imagination.

I had made some videos – one of my wife riding a bike along the Haskell Creek Trail – and she had seen them. My young student cinematographer friend told me as we rode that morning towards the sun that the first thing I should do is improve my camera resolution and she asked me what I wanted for Christmas. We were out along the levee by then and I told her that I really didn’t want anything. She laughed and said that was what her boyfriend had told her when she had asked him. I didn’t say much more, but I couldn’t really tell her that I hadn’t really told her the truth. But it wasn’t a Christmas thing.

But if I could watch her pony tail, fluttering in the wake of her smile, once or a thousand times more, I could possibly live with that. She will always be someone else’s daughter. But that summer morning, she was riding bike with me.

**

Postcard to a traveling friend:

I had simply neglected my work this morning. A househusband’s work is never done. But the weather was perfect for a bike ride. But in the other room my wife was slamming the school books and muttering. So I instead unlocked just the one bike, but at least I didn’t leave without uttering those words a spouse longs to hear: “Do you need anything from the store?”

Well, when I then rode past your place on my way to the store, I knew that you were already playing hooky yourself and wouldn’t be back for a couple of weeks. But “I was thinking of you” is always a good way to start a postcard. And to be completely authentic you should conclude with, “wishing you were here.” But I was standing by the red bell peppers by then.

And you won’t believe it, but I will tell you anyway. I came home without the eggs my wife insisted were essential for a happy marriage.

I could have cared less, or was it instead: I couldn’t have. I should have cared about someone or something and truly I had and I would. But the bright blue sky was in my eyes. Friends and lovers might be just over my shoulder or across the deep blue sea. Imagination is sometimes the next best thing to reality.

And so here I now sit. My bike, locked up on the porch. Even my cat is taking a nap. Maybe after lunch I can go for swim. I know a quiet pool were the fish won’t nibble at your tuckus. And the skies are not cloudy all day.

Or maybe I’ll take a short nap in the sun and then I can reopen my eyes. And maybe my wife and I can take a bike ride after supper. And maybe I can ride again with you still later in the month.

But still wishing I hadn’t forgotten the eggs.

-          Yours truly on a blue sky day in Kansas

       **