Big Boy Bikes and Birthdays

Well, the boy is almost 7 - or will be in a few days. In the impromptu doctor's office visit yesterday - where we discovered he had strep - we also found out he weighs close to 60 pounds. No wonder I can't carry him up the stairs any more.

Threes doses of medicine later and we went in search of his birthday present. A brand new bike in blue, with a helmet color best described as poison dart frog red-green-yellow, and a bell, came home in the back of the car.

Some people cry at graduation and some people cry at weddings. Me, I teared up looking at my husband - who was tearing up looking at the boy. Tearing because this was exactly the scene we have talked about over the past three years - the one where a shiny new seven year old learns how to ride a shiny new bike.

All the more relevant because in my weakest, darkest moments - the ones where I didn't think T would live, I was saddest for the two of them -- that the boy wouldn't have his dad to teach him how to ride a bike. Which, given what was at stake, should have been the least of my worries. But it's odd how at 3 am, when the only other people up are the nurses and first year residents, how clearly your mind can create a movie. It's a movie with a perfect picture - filmed so beautifully you can feel the temperature of the day, the breeze in the air and you know almost to the minute what time it is because the sunlight tells you. My movie had two endings. The first, with T and the boy happily succeeding. The second ending was the one I couldn't get out of my head. It was the one where I was trying to teach him. And the breeze was cold, and I couldn't help him. No thumbs up for that ending.

And it's not that I couldn't have, or can't teach him - but the one thing T is much, much better at than I am - is to give the little guy enough - to let him go.

So in the end of the real movie, T followed while the boy increased his speed with the training wheels - and both of them came home predicting that in the next two weeks the training wheels will be off and the race will be on.