The Letting Go (or How Not to Wreck a Bicycle)

On a warm June morning in 2011, I stood on the patio in my backyard. The sun was warm, and an Indiana morning was greeting me. I opened the doors to the shed, and I quietly pulled out my daughter’s backyard toys--T-ball set, wagon, frisbees, gallon sized mega-bubble blowing kit, corroded and leaking. Taylor would wake up soon, and it was a Saturday, so we would have the day together. As I dragged her toys out and dusted away the spider webs from a winter in storage, I spotted her unused bicycle and felt a rising sense of frustration. Taylor was nine years old, and despite my efforts of the last four years, even of the last few weeks, she still refused to learn to ride a bicycle.

I had approached this topic in a myriad of ways--“showing” her she was already riding her bike without the training wheels, because I had lifted them, pointing out other kids having fun riding bikes, taking her out for practice lessons, which usually ended with her sitting on the ground, arms crossed, glaring at me in anger, refusing to move. I was no stranger to any of this, as this child’s will by this point was a widely known and oft-chuckled-about trait among friends and family.   

Just a few days before I stood there on that June morning, I had tried reasoning with her. “Taylor,” I had said, “Won’t you feel ridiculous if you are fifteen years old and still don’t know how to ride a bicycle yet?”

“No,” she had indignantly replied, “because at that point I can just wait a year and start driving a car.” I had sighed, defeated, annoyed.

Friends and relatives had loaned and gifted me books over the years with titles like, “How to Parent Your Extra-Spirited Child” or “Raising the Strong-Willed Child.” Nothing worked. In parenting we pick and choose our battles wisely, or so we say, but this kid and I were going to battle so often that I was exhausted, felt terrible about myself, and had a sneaking suspicion I was breaking her will the way people describe “breaking a horse.” Perhaps not incidentally her favorite movie was “Spirit,” about a wild horse who will not be broken and instead is eventually found by someone who understands the horse shouldn’t be broken in the first place and should instead be allowed to just BE ITSELF.

Why did I even want her to ride a bike? There were a number of reasons, not the least of which were my own beloved memories of bicycle riding, but also because she had asked for and received a very expensive bike for Christmas that year, then promptly refused to learn to ride it.

When I was growing up on Lake Lawrence, our bicycles meant FREEDOM. They were our transportation to and from every corner of our world--back and forth to our friends’ houses, the woods, the sand dunes, the lagoon, the pavilion, the baseball field, the tennis courts, the basketball courts, the canals, the fishing creek. We rode in packs, sailing with the wind in our hair, standing on our pedals, competing against each other by ramping the speed bumps. These bikes were our tickets to countless childhood adventures. And the truth is--I still love a good bike ride. In fact, I have a pink, purple, and black plaid beach cruiser with a basket, a cup holder, and a bell on the handlebar that says, “I Love My Bike.”

And I wanted Taylor to love a bike the way I loved my bike. This wasn’t so much an attempt to live vicariously through her as it was just wanting so much to give her the kind of gift that had been such an integral and wonderful part of my own childhood. I think this is a pretty normal part of parenting--wanting them to have the most wonderful of our own childhoods and trying desperately to help them avoid the most painful parts of our childhoods.

The lost art of riding a bike--racing home as the rain was starting, skinning knees and elbows, alighting the neighbor’s back wheel pegs to hitch a ride, climbing onto someone’s handlebars after popping a bicycle inner tube on a hedge thorn in the woods, tripping up the chain and dislodging it from the track, having to wait, impatiently, shifting foot to foot, while a neighborhood dad puts the chain back on. I so desperately wanted Taylor to have all of this, that it never even occurred to me she might not want it.  

So there I was on a June morning, standing, facing the expensive and sadly unused bicycle, when I heard the back door open and a pajama-clad, sleepy-eyed Taylor walked out, squinting into the sunshine. I turned around and our eyes met. She spotted the bike. Immediately I saw her body stiffen, defenses up, face firming--I felt my own body do the same. Here we were again--squaring off on our beautiful June Saturday--a familiar battle of wills on the horizon. And then I just stopped.

I took a deep breath. I let it out. I slowly guided the bicycle out of the shed and leaned it against the fence. Her arms were crossed now, as she stood at the edge of the patio. “I’m not riding that bike today,” she said. I said nothing. “I mean it. I’m not doing it,” she added, for good measure. I continued pulling toys out of the shed, and I rolled the winterized grill out onto the patio. That’s what we would do that day. We would fire up the grill, and eat in the backyard, swatting away June flies and pretending our dog Ozzie was being a nuisance by begging for stolen bites of chicken under the picnic table.

“I’m not riding that bicycle,” she said again.

“I just had to get your bike out to get the grill out for dinner later. I need to clean it,” I said.

“Okay, but I’m not riding the bike,” she said. She looked nervous, scared. My heart broke. I felt tears sting my eyes. I had done this to her. Years of engaging in these battles of the will with her, and for what? I swallowed the tears and took another deep breath.

“Honey,” I said. “I want to tell you something. I have been thinking about it. I really wanted you to learn to ride a bike just because I loved riding bikes when I was little. But maybe bikes aren’t for you, and that’s okay. I want you to know that I love you, and I am so proud of you, and I don’t care if you ever learn to ride that bike, okay.? I’m never going to say another word about it. I promise.” And I meant it. I meant it with every cell in my body. “I’m going to clean the grill, and you can play with your toys or bring Ozzie out to play fetch if you want. It’s pretty outside today, and I just want us to have fun and relax, maybe watch a movie after it gets dark?” She nodded, eyes fixed on my face, sizing me up. Then her face relaxed; she understood what this was. I was surrendering this fight.  

“Okay, Mom,” she said. I turned around and began uncovering the grill, gathering supplies to clean it. Taylor busied herself with the toys from the shed. I saw Ozzie gazing longingly out the back door, eager to join his people in the sunshine. As I walked towards the door and reached for the knob, Taylor called out excitedly, “MOM! LOOK! LOOK AT ME!”

And there she was, across the patio, on her bicycle, riding in a wobbly, but confident circle, amazed and grinning from ear to ear.

“I’m doing it,” she shrieked.

“Taylor,” I exclaimed. “Oh my gosh! You ARE doing it! Way to go, kiddo!”

She was getting steadier. She was smiling. She was riding a bike. She was so, so, so proud of herself. And I had done nothing…except let go.

Taylor practiced the bicycle all day, around and around the patio, switching directions, getting braver, bolder, but ever cautious. This was also how she learned to walk years earlier. One afternoon at her great-grandmother’s house in Cincinnati at thirteen months old, she was standing at a dollhouse playing, and she just turned and took off--not the way most kids walk in those early stages--a step here, a step there, stringing together a few steps in a row, then falling and crawling around--no, not the gradual approach. She learned to walk all at once, just like she had just learned to ride that bicycle, in her own way, on her own terms, when she was good and ready and knew it.

That evening after we ate our grilled chicken and vegetables on the patio, Taylor asked me if we could drive out to the lake and ride our bicycles together. “Are you sure, Taylor? Around the whole lake? That’s a long way to ride on your first day,” I said.

“I can do it, Mom. Let’s do it.” So we loaded up our bikes, went to the lake, and we rode. We rode the first mile together, her a short way in front of me, still growing bolder, more daring, going faster. I felt the familiar sense of panic rising in my stomach. She was getting over-confident. She was going to fall. I could see it coming, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it. She hit a patch of loose gravel, and the bike slid out from under her, depositing her, hands first, knees next, onto the gravelly, dusty pavement. She began howling and crying immediately. By the time I reached her, she looked betrayed--by me or the bicycle or the universe itself, I could not tell yet.

“I’m never riding a bike again. I HATE THAT BIKE! I’m done with this bike ride. FOREVER!” (She had quite the flare for the dramatic.) She stomped her foot, then stood there, sucking air in and out, letting out little indignant puffs of cries. Her little knees were raw with tiny pieces of gravel sticking to little red bloody trickles. She looked up, face streaked with wet dirt and tears, her little personally affronted knees jutting out as unwanted guests at the scene. A rite of passage. A portrait of childhood in a moment. “I mean it,” she yelled. “I’m NOT riding anymore.”

There we were again. She was on the defense. I felt frustrated. Of course, she was riding the bike home. I could hear the argument in my head already--her refusing to touch that bike, and me lecturing, will-breaking, You get on that bike and ride it home. That’s what we do. You always get back on the bicycle. In this family, we don’t quit. GET ON THAT BIKE!

But then I felt it again. I saw her face. I thought of that morning, of the shift--in me, then in her. The letting go.

“Okay, Taylor,” I said, gently brushing off her tender little knees. “I’m sorry you fell. I know how bad skinned knees hurt. I wiped out in that same spot once when I was a kid.” That was true. I had. And it had hurt. “Let’s go,” I added. And I turned my bike around and began walking slowly, hands on handlebars, bike at my side. She stood in the road watching me, gauging the situation, waiting for the storm. She picked up her bike and caught up with me, walking alongside me, nervously glancing up from time to time, disarmed and a bit unnerved.  

We walked quietly for a moment, as the cicadas started singing their summer song, interrupted only by her occasional sniffles. Finally she broke the silence. “Mom?” she said quietly, as she stopped walking.

“Yeah, kiddo?” I stopped and looked at her.

“If I get back on my bike, can we go slow? I’m scared,” she said.

“Of course, honey! That’s a good idea. Then we can get home faster and clean up your knees. It will take a long time to walk back to the car like this with these bikes,” I said.

“No, I want to turn around and finish our ride, all the way around the lake, like we talked about. I just want to be more careful. Can we do that?” she asked.

“Sure, if you want to,” I said. And so that’s what we did--her out in front of me on her bike, a little bit more cautious, a little bit less innocent, the evening summer wind healing her little skinned knees, and the letting go healing her little banged up heart. And we made it all the way--two miles, up and down the canal roads, all the way around, only one wreck, on day one of her life as a bike-rider.

I watched her after she fell asleep that night, fresh out of a bath, knees elaborately bandaged in a way one might even describe as slightly OVER-protected--her doing, not mine. The bandaged knees stuck out sorely from beneath a too short nightgown, because she had grown five inches in the last nine months. This daughter. This person of mine. This miracle God temporarily loaned me to raise. She didn’t need me to out-will her, had never needed me to do that. She was born with a will like mine--strong, always on high-alert, often panicked, defensive, brazen, and fierce. Sending two wills like this into a fight together just creates more of all of those things--fear, panic, defensiveness, indignation, ferocity. This is not the right way, has never been the right way, I thought.

No, this child did not need me to out-will her. She needed me to set an example for her, of what to do with that strong will, of how to navigate a world where the other people are all just as pesky in their humanity as I am, as tragically and epically flawed as I am, as prone to mistakes and fumbles as I am. And as she is. As all humans are. She needed me to set an example of what it is like to rise up in that will, and then to let go in spite of it. Pain is never in the letting go. Pain is in the resistance to letting go, in the unwillingness, the inability to let go.

Resist and hurt, resist and hurt, resist and hurt, and then? The letting go, into peace, into love, into the acceptance of being human in a world with other humans.

How conditional my love must have felt to her in our moments of will-fighting. There is a time and place for pushing, for applying pressure, for loud insistence, for aggressive encouragement, but with a strong-willed child, that time is almost never. Their own will is constantly working overtime anyway, exhausting them, leading the way while they try to keep up.

I lay down next to her on our futon where she had fallen asleep watching tv with me after her bath. She was almost as tall as I was by this point, a whole child, nothing baby-like about her, aside from how overwhelmed I felt by my love for this precious, perfectly human little person. She needed me to love her right where she was, just like she was, with the patience and grace to let her find her own way when appropriate, just like I am loved in this world, just as love, unconditional love, is always meant to be.

And this is not to say that we never had a battle of the wills again. But we never struggled in the same way again, have never struggled like that or to that extent to this day. And it’s not easy. I’m human, too, with glaring flaws. I’m bossy. I have a natural tendency toward bullying, especially when someone has offended me or my loved ones. I’m intense. My love for my people is fierce and overwhelming, but at least today I know the pain is in the resistance. And I know the freedom is in the letting go. And I know love is meant to be unconditional. At least today I get a shot at remembering these truths and running face first into grace before it’s too late, before the battle, before the hurt. Today, I can feel the rising up, and I can breathe it back down, and I can walk side by side with our bikes until it is time to take off into the wind again, together, into the letting go.