Lives Piece

I gleamed as my Dad pulled into the “yellow park”, as I called it, with my bike in the trunk and a box of soon to be used band-aids. My mom, skeptical about the whole idea at my young age, stayed home. I could imagine my mom perfectly: nervous and anxious on the inside, but only illustrating signs of outrage, while she lingers around the kitchen, eating everything in sight.

Suddenly the car came to a screeching halt, rudely interrupting my daydream, but for something even. In seconds I was on top of a gradually sloping hill, my father next to me standing tall, while each of us clenched the bike. This was it. I sat down on the bike and my dad let it go and down the bike and I went, right to the pavement at my father’s feet. I shook it off, elbow and knee already scraped right off the bat, and gave it another try. I guess my dad realized there I wasn’t ready for the hill, so he picked up the bike, and turned it around. Now I faced a long, almost perfectly straight path, with not an inch of down or uphill. This time, I even got the pedals moving, but keeping the bike straight at the same time, no way. After a few seconds, I lay on the pavement; chin gushing blood and a gigantic, throbbing bruise on my right arm. My dad motioned toward he car, but I refused; it be just like giving into my mother. “One more try!” I yelled. Just as skeptical as my mom had been, he complied.

My father sets up the bike and I painfully, but full of determination, make my way over. “One, two, THREE,” and then I was pedaling with all the effort in the world. My mind was so clear as I round an impossible turn and fly up a tremendously difficult hill. After just two minutes, which felt like hours, of winding through the park with invigorating wind crashing in my face, I reached my father, and it was over. But it wasn’t over. The skill to ride a bike, that accomplishment, that fulfillment, would never escape me.

From that moment on, anything was possible.

I jumped back into the car, blood and bruises from my chin to my knees, but I had never felt better. The following weeks would be full of bigger goals, larger obstacles, and tons of injuries: there was never a limit.