Love Is Like Riding A Bike—Up A Hill
I see her rush to where the sidewalk meets the road and take my time jogging towards her. Does that make me a good or bad parent? Either my kid gets hurt and I did nothing to stop it. Or it’s a lesson she’s supposed to learn. Maybe the most effective way to learn it. She’ll be fine. She’s learned to catch herself. What she hasn’t learned is to not stop on inclines.
“If you brake on a hill you’ll fall over,” I caution, as I watch her bike lean slightly to the left.
At first, she couldn’t pedal. When the sidewalk was straight, we pushed her and she’d coast. Push, roll, coast, stop. It took her a few falls to know how to lean on turns or up hills. Sometimes we caught her. Sometimes she’d catch herself. Sometimes she would land in the grass. I see her bike tilt towards the slight hill and don’t run to stop its momentum. Tipping over, she turns around to sheepishly grin at me. I make an “I told you so” face and help her up. She pedals on.
Two days later, my husband and I have a disagreement. Slamming my brake atop the hill of stubbornness, he doesn’t rush to catch me. Sighing, he helps me up and dusts off my pride. It’s taken us over a decade of love and marriage — some turns and hills, a handful of falls, and a few skinned knees — to imperfectly learn the push, roll, coast motion. Especially on hills or turns.
Sometimes we stop ourselves. Sometimes we catch each other. Sometimes we topple over.
But we get up. We pedal forward.
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in this series "280 Words".