All good

The little guy got a big boy bicycle for Christmas, with training wheels of course and adorably right-sized for him but it has a real chain and coaster brakes and all that stuff. I admit that was more my wife’s idea than mine and I was somewhat skeptical that the little guy would be indifferent to it, specifically in regards to the sheer amount of physical work that riding a bike actually demands, and also because sometimes the little guy just hates change and trying new things. But he took to it pretty much right away.

We’ve been fortunate enough to be having a mild winter so far (in which, honestly, the tension has been killing me as everyone keeps insisting this winter will have major snowstorms since we got off light last year, but no blizzard has materialized yet, just today’s very light dusting. Snow and get it over with!) so the little guy has gotten to take the bike out for a spin maybe a half-dozen times since Christmas. And he’s made astounding progress, to my eye. His first time up in the saddle he was understandably tentative, and wasn’t quite getting the concept that if he didn’t keep pedaling the bike would just come to a stop, especially if he was facing slightly uphill. He also had a tendency to aim straight for the curb, then stop at the last possible second (or, beyond that, let the curb stop him), at which point he needed help reorienting the bike and getting started with a push again. But he got a little better each time and recently he seemed to find his physical rhythm in the constant turn of the pedals to the point where he could do it without thinking about it, which of course makes all the difference in the world as to whether something feels like work or feels like fun.

So over this recent long weekend I took him outside one afternoon to help him get the bike up the driveway, make sure he put his helmet on, and then just watch him ride in perpetual loops and figure eights under his own power around the cul-de-sac. I was calling out some encouragement in the early going but eventually it seemed like he had moved beyond really needing that, so I just stood on the sidewalk by the mailbox and observed. At one point he was riding more or less directly away from me, approaching the curve, but he turned the handlebars with room to spare, no big deal, and came about without breaking stride (or pedal-stroke, I guess). As he was heading toward me at that point, I smiled at him. He responded by continuing to pedal but also taking one hand off the handlebars to give me a thumbs-up. Also, he winked at me, so overall the message was clear: “I got this, Dad.”

He is four, did I mention that? No strange time anomaly resulting in him transforming into a precociously savvy twelve-year-old overnight or anything. He’s four. And he is a trip. And he’s getting brash about riding his bike as fast as he can, too. The weirdest thing is it’s less bittersweet than I thought it would be. I think on some level I do want him to grow up, not too quickly, but enough that when he does something as ridiculously beyond-his-years as give me a winking thumbs-up, all I can do is laugh and give a thumbs-up back.