A fall, and a helping hand

A few miles into a Memorial Day weekend bike ride on the Capital Crescent Trail, my 9-year-old nephew Andrew and I pulled over for a water break. Below us off the side of the trail was the Potomac River, with kayakers drifting by. In the distant background stood the iconic spire of the Washington Monument. Pretty cool view for a bike ride, I thought to myself as we took out our water bottles.

Then we heard a tumble and a shriek. Just a hundred feet behind us, a runner we'd passed a few minutes earlier was rolling across the pavement, entangled with a bicyclist. Another bicyclist had come to a stop just in front of them.

"You stay with our bikes; I'll go see if I can help," I said to Andrew.

The woman was clearly okay; she was sitting up on the trail by the time I reached her, whimpering just a little bit as she apologized to the bicyclists. "I know I darted into your way," she said. "I saw a snake by the side of the trail and it started me, so I jumped to the left. I knew you were passing me; I don't know why I did that. It was just that I was so startled by the snake."

The bicycling couple were shaken as well. Though no one seemed angry, I did not feel that they were being particularly comforting, perhaps because they too were distressed. I knew exactly how the runner felt. I had taken a bad fall while running last summer, and I still remember how jarring and disorienting it was even though, like her, I was just a little scraped up with no serious damage done.

But when I fell last summer, the one passer-by who stopped to help continued on his way as soon as I said, almost reflexively, that I was all right, and immediately afterwards I regretted my own self-sufficiency. I had been frightened and in pain. I wished I hadn't been so quick to tell him I was okay. I wished he'd stayed a little longer to be sure.

So when I reached the runner, I put my hand on her bare and sweaty arm and tried to offer comforting words. "It's okay," I said. "I know how you feel. Rattled." 

As I touched her, I thought briefly about how some people would not want a stranger laying hands on their bare skin, and I felt momentarily presumptuous, but I had to trust myself that what I remembered needing when I had been the fallen runner -- company, comfort, reassurance -- was what she would want also. I asked her if she'd like a drink of water, and she said yes, so I brought her my water bottle.

"I'm okay," she said. "Just a little scraped up."

"I know, but it's scary. Breathe slowly and deeply," I told her.

In just a minute or two, she was ready to resume her run. I felt as if something had come full circle, as if I'd finally had a chance to reclaim the comfort no one had offered me when I fell while running. It was as if the reverse of what really happened had taken place, as if I'd fallen again and this time been offered a helping hand, simply because I was able to offer one myself.

Later in the day, I saw a Facebook post from a friend who was widowed over a year ago describing a weekend party she had just attended at which she met a woman who had recently gone through the same kind of loss. This friend wrote about the satisfaction of being able to reach out with empathy and help, and about the perspective that the encounter gave her on her own long-term grieving process and all the healing that had taken place for her in recent months.

The two events are not comparable, but the sense of healing that an empathetic moment gave both of us seemed to have a tinge of similarity. It made me think about how trauma -- whether minor, like my tumble, or severe, like her loss -- may be the ultimate pass-it-forward model. We heal when we can help someone else through the same thing. And for that reason, I was so glad to have pulled over for a water break just when that runner fell.

A priority on going biking

There were plenty of reasons for me not to go biking yesterday.

First and foremost, it was a work day for me. All summer, no matter how much fun I was having with the kids or with friends or other family members, the fact that I was putting in a substandard work day gnawed at me. At best, during July and August, I wrote for about three hours a day, compared with the six or more I can log once school is back in session.

So no matter how much fun I was having during summer break, it was always with a sense of comfort in knowing that a return to real life, and full work days, lay in the not-too-distant future.

And as is the case every year, when the school year started anew, nothing could have been more welcome than the opportunity to work from 9 to 3. That’s exactly how I felt a week ago, on the kids’ first day of classes. I turned on my computer five minutes after Holly clambered onto the bus, and I powered through three or four meaty assignments before Tim showed up with his first day of seventh grade behind him, asking about snack options.

But wanting to apply myself to my work was easy a week ago. It was a welcome novelty after the summer, and besides, that day was rainy. The whole first week of school was rainy, in fact. I was delighted to sit at my kitchen table writing for hours on end.

The Tuesday one week after the start of classes was a classic New England late-summer day, though, with a tinge of humidity underlying a warm, sunny morning. “This would be a good day for a bike ride,” I mused to myself as I drove across town after stopping by my parents’ house. “Too bad I can’t take one.”

Except wait. Why couldn’t I?

Well, because I had to file my weekly set of community news briefs. And write a blog entry. And slog along on a ghost-writing project I’m in the thick of.

But those were only the pragmatic reasons. Really, I reasoned with myself, I couldn’t take a bike ride because….well, because it was the middle of a work week in the midst of a busy month; vacation season had just ended; I hadn’t planned ahead to do something special and frivolous (normally if I’m going to divert from my regular workday routine, I plan it weeks if not months in advance); and besides, everyone else was at school or work – my children, my spouse, most of my friends, my sisters, my neighbors – why should I have the privilege of being out on a bike ride?

Because I can, came the answer, crashing over me like a breaking wave. Because I devoted the majority of my limited reading time this summer to Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project,” the gist of which is that each of us has a personal obligation to the universe to find what it is that makes us happiest and try to work that into our lives, regardless of our other necessary responsibilities. And spending time outdoors, preferably doing something physically challenging, on a warm late-summer day is definitely something that makes me happy.

But one thing I’ve learned about being self-employed is that playing hooky is very different now from how it was when I had a corporate employer. Back then, I took the occasional day off from work with a sense of triumph, even glee. “I earned this,” I would think to myself. “My company owes me this pleasure.”

When you’re self-employed, though, the boss always makes you feel guilty for a day off.

Make it a priority, I reminded myself. Do the things that matter most to you.

And so I did. I made myself a sandwich, filled up a water bottle and headed out.

You’re just lucky that you can do this, I told myself. You should still be feeling a little guilty, though, that other people can’t.

I wasn’t feeling guilty, though. I was feeling grateful. And happy. And yes, very fortunate. But also a little bit proud of my sense of focus. I’d made it a priority, and I’d done it.

As my friend Tracey wrote earlier in the day when I said I was contemplating putting work on hold, “Do it. You'll always remember the bike ride. You won't remember that extra hour you spent working.”

It turned out to be two hours of not-working, not one, but that was okay. I returned with inspiration for my blog and renewed energy for another couple of hours of work before the kids got home.

I felt a sense of accomplishment, too. Not the same sense of accomplishment I get when I finish drafting an article. The kind that comes from following my own priorities, no matter how frivolous they may be. Which in this case meant taking the opportunity to savor a magnificent and unique late-summer New England day, despite the awareness that maybe I should have been working.

Biking before writing

I didn’t intend to set a precedent on Monday, but the combination of robust physical exercise in the morning and then attending sessions of the Aspen Writers’ Conference all afternoon worked so well that I did the same thing on Tuesday. Only this time, instead of hiking, I biked through Aspen’s West End onto the bike path and from there out to the Maroon Creek Road. Most bicyclists hit that road with the intention of pedaling all the way to Maroon Lake and the base of the Maroon Bells; I knew I didn’t have the stamina for that entire ride, but I decided to just start riding and see how far I could get given the time, and the strength, that I had.

In that respect, it was similar to Monday’s endeavor. I wasn’t under a tight time crunch, which is a rare situation for me when I’m at home, but that’s typical of being away: the restrictions we put on ourselves when home, and particularly the tight scheduling that tends to lay claim to every minute of the day, doesn’t take hold in quite the same way. I wanted to attend a writers’ panel at 2:30, but I set out on the bike four hours before that, so I knew I’d have time to do all the riding I wanted.

The ride was physically similar to hiking as well: a steady uphill climb, and I took it slow. It was terrain I’d covered many times before, but only by car or bus. Being so exposed, and moving along so slowly as I rode, gave me a close-up view of the river, the meadows, the wildflowers, the rocky red-dirt facades. It’s a restricted access road; the few cars and tour buses that passed me were minutes apart. Plenty of cyclists passed me; they were all on racing bikes with slender tires, pedaling hard and flying along even though they too were heading uphill. I was on a mountain bike not intended for that kind of ride even for someone with more pedaling strength than I have, but it didn’t bother me that other riders flew by. I was happy just to be out biking.

Eventually I looked up the road and saw still more uphill and decided I’d covered enough ground. An hour and a quarter had passed since I’d left town, and I had no particular goal in mind as an endpoint, given that I knew I wasn’t going to reach Maroon Lake. So when it felt like I’d worked as hard as I needed to, I turned around and coasted the same distance, all downhill. That part was easy and gave me even more time to admire the scenery, and also mull over a lot of memories of that valley.

For many decades, my grandparents owned a cabin just uphill from where I’d turned around; when I was growing up we’d have family picnics and occasional sleepovers in the cabin. When we reached our teenage years, sometimes our cousins had parties there and invited us, which was charitable of them: we were from out of town and not of much interest to anyone else attending. One of my cousins was married there, though I realized as I rode that my only memory of his wedding ceremony was having to drive back to the cabin from town with the brother of the groom after it ended because the father of the bride had not shown up at the reception and it was feared he had somehow keeled over while still at the cabin and needed help. (None of this was the case, but the drive with my cousin was an adventure in itself.)

Our family doesn’t own the cabin anymore, but that’s all right; like everyone else who visits this part of Colorado, the whole valley is ours to enjoy as hikers, bicyclists or bus tour riders. My ride back to town was fast and easy, and I arrived in time for a quick dessert stop at the Paradise Bakery before I went to the condo to change clothes and head to the conference center for the afternoon events.

When I sent my husband a photo I’d taken of myself on the bike ride, snow-frosted Maroon Bells in the background, he texted back, “Aren’t you supposed to be studying, not biking?” Not to worry, I told him, the afternoon would be full of educational content. And yet as I thought back on the bike ride with all its similarities to the hike on the previous day, and how I’d pedaled slowly, concentrating only on moving forward and not on how far I would get, absorbing the sounds and sights and smells that surrounded me, welcoming the memories they brought, and letting my own pace rather than external instructions be my guide as far as when to turn back, it occurred to me that maybe the morning had in fact been just as educational as the afternoon.

The Little Engine Whose Mom Hoped It Could

Over the past week or two, Holly’s interest in biking has caught fire. Early in the season, she cast aside her beginner’s two-wheeler in favor of Tim’s larger, outgrown bike, delighted by the extra power its greater size and number of gears gave her. Since then we’ve taken about a half-dozen rides a mile or so up and down the road.

Yesterday afternoon she asked again to go for a bike ride. Holly was in the mood to try something a little more ambitious than our usual aimless jaunts, and I wanted to see what she could do, so I suggested we ride into the town center. It’s a little less than three miles, and not a difficult route, though the last mile is along a fairly busy road. But it wasn’t yet rush hour.

The ride into town went well. Holly pedaled steadily and cheerfully. At the general store in town, I bought her a cookie, and we sat out on the store’s porch while she ate it.

The ride home was more difficult for her, though. I think she just burned out. She whined and fussed and eventually cried about how hard it was. She stopped often to rest.

I knew I had myriad options for how to handle it. I could be a cheerleader, trying to boost her spirits by emphasizing how well she’d done on the ride already and how I was absolutely certain she could do the rest. (I wasn’t.) I could cajole, urging her to give it her best shot. Or I could do the opposite: point out she had agreed to the ride, she had already made it one way, and she needed to be a good sport and push herself a little to make it home.

If one of these was the right answer, I certainly didn’t know which one. So I didn’t do any of them. I just rode behind her, listened to her complaints, told her in as objective way as possible – neither cheering nor cajoling nor scolding – that I was fairly sure she could finish the ride, and waited it out.

The last third of the route is the easiest part. Once we reached that section of road, she stopped whining and wiping away tears; she coasted along and seemed to cheer up. When we arrived home, I knew once again that there were all sorts of approaches I could take – making a big fuss over the accomplishment; pointing out that she’d overcome the challenges and triumphed; trying to make an object lesson out of the fact that we’d completed the ride we set out to do.

But again, I opted for none of the above. Just as earlier in the ride I’d figured whatever strength Holly needed to finish the ride had to come from within her and not from me cheering, cajoling or scolding, once it was over I believed her sense of pride and accomplishment also needed to come from herself and not from me. So I told her I was glad we’d gone for the ride, but we didn’t discuss it much further than that. We went inside and started getting ready for dinner.

This was just one of the many times that I knew I had a lot of options but I simply had no idea which one was best. All of those approaches are tacks I’ve taken at some point in my parenting history, and I know each one sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.

But it seemed to me no matter what that I couldn’t go wrong by stepping back and letting Holly’s own inner voice guide her: first in telling her she could probably complete the ride, and then in making her feel a sense of pride in having done it. The Little Engine That Could didn't have a mother engine urging her along either; the strength came from within.

Holly had cheered up to her usual self by the time we sat down to dinner. She was tired by bedtime, but not unhappy. There are so many approaches to parenting challenges. It’s hard sometimes to remember that sometimes the best approach is no approach at all. I don’t actually know where Holly found the motivation to finish the ride, or how she felt once she had. We just went along with our day and didn’t have much discussion about it. But however she did it, my guess is she’ll be able to draw on the same method again. And that surely beats any amount of praising or cajoling I could possibly muster.

Trail riding (or jogging)

In a way, what happened yesterday afternoon complemented what happened on Saturday.

Or, really, what didn’t happen on Saturday. I was sincerely hoping to go on a hike with my kids, but hiking was not meant to be. At least not as the kids saw it. They just didn’t want to. So we didn’t. But although I went along with the alternative they proposed – a walk through Portland and a visit to their favorite playground there – I still kvetched, in my own mind and on my blog if not audibly to them.

Yesterday afternoon, the opposite happened. The kids had a professional day, and so I didn’t get out for a run at the time I usually go, right after Holly boards the school bus. By late afternoon, I was anxious to get going, so I tried to come up with a plan that might interest Holly since Tim was already occupied. “Want to ride your bike alongside me and we can go up to the soccer field?” I asked her. “Then once we’re there, you can ride around the track with me or play on the fitness course.” Running laps is about my least favorite kind of run. But I’d had a good aerobic workout on the stationery bike earlier in the day; my primary goal was just to get my daily mile in, and to see Holly get some exercise as well. Getting her to agree to join me at all would be a struggle, I thought; but she said she’d ride along.

But then we took a detour. The ice cream stand next door to us closed for the season on Monday, so as we headed out to the road, I gave her the option of doing laps around its large parking lot rather than around the soccer field. She liked that idea. And on the first lap, she noticed something: a trail leading off the edge of the parking lot. I told her that it went past Bates Pond and through the woods, ending up at the end of my parents’ driveway next door to our house. “But you don’t want to ride on a trail,” I assured her.

Actually, she informed me, she wanted to try it.

So we started down the trail. Since this same kid will never agree to a hike with me these days, I assumed she’d turn back as soon as she saw that biking on a trail through the woods is a far cry from biking on our town’s paved footpaths or even the gravel driveway. But she stuck with it. We went farther and farther back, and once I realized she really planned to forge ahead on this route, I started noticing how gorgeous the path was on this particular day: the foliage nearing its peak, the waters of Bates Pond still and reflective, the sun dappling through the tree canopy.

Holly rode on, and when she reached parts of the trail that were too narrow or winding for her undersized Barbie-accessorized two-wheeler to manage, she walked her bike. I jogged behind her with the dog on the leash. “This is fun!” she exclaimed.

“But why…” I wanted to ask. “Why is it that if I’d suggested a walk in the woods you would never have agreed to it, but here we are bushwhacking our way along on a combination run/bike ride?”

Eventually we were all the way at the far end of the loop. “If we cut through right by that stone wall, it’s just a short walk down Grandma and Buppa’s driveway and home,” I told her.

“But if we turn around, we can do the whole thing again,” she responded.

According to my Nike Plus odometer, we’d already completed nearly two miles. “Do you really want to retrace the whole trail?” asked her. We could almost see our house through the woods.

“I definitely do,” she said.

So that’s what we did. In the end, we logged more than three miles. It was Holly’s first time trail riding, and she loved it. And what surprised me most was that I hadn’t planned it; it just developed spontaneously.

But sometimes I overplan, like with Saturday’s non-hike. Sometimes the best things happen when I don’t plan anything at all. Holly and I had a great time out on the trail, even though I was expecting a few laps around the soccer field. If I ask her if she wants to do it again today, she’ll probably say no. When I plan things, they end up not happening. So I’ll just wait until the next time that the pieces spontaneously fall into place, and then I’ll enjoy it all over again.

A short excursion on a sunny afternoon

It’s always pleasing when the most unplanned excursions turn out to be so much fun. For all the time I spend scrutinizing the family calendar and reading up on regional cultural highlights, figuring out which weekend we might be able to visit this museum or that landmark only to see the plans nudged aside by bad weather, Tim’s baseball schedule, too much work for Rick, or the out-and-out preference all four of us often cannot resist to just stay home when the opportunity arises – as I call it, the ever-present fine balance between agoraphobia and cocooning -- sometimes something that required no planning, research or advance ticket sales at all just happens and we have a great time. Familial serendipity.

Yesterday afternoon was just such an experience, though it was almost too minor to even term an excursion. I received an email saying that a library book Tim was on the reserve list for was finally available, and Tim asked me if I’d pick it up for him. Holly climbed off the bus cheerful and dynamic, unlike the day before; she skipped down the driveway, making me think maybe she was good for more than an afternoon snack and some coloring, which is how she often opts to spend the hour or two before dinner. The weather was sunny and cool.

“Want to go to the library with me to pick up a book for Tim?” I asked Holly. “If you’ll walk or ride your bike, you can buy a snack at Ferns.” Ferns is our local country store and it’s across the street from the library; both are exactly a mile from our house. In my ongoing efforts to see Holly spend time outdoors, active and exercising, I often couple a small treat with a walk or bike ride. It’s less of an issue with Tim because he plays so much baseball at this time of year.

Holly said she’d go with me, which I didn’t expect, but even more surprising was that when I asked Tim if he wanted to come along just so as not to overlook him entirely, he said he would. That was unusual; he usually opts for homework, reading and computer games in the late afternoon hours. I’m not sure what enticed him yesterday, but I was happy as the three of us set out on our bikes at about 4:30. It felt like a fine way to take advantage of a sunny mild afternoon, one in which we still had hours of sunlight left in the day although at other times of year it would have been dark by then already.

And despite the lack of planning and anticipation, we had a great time. Not even a minor bike malfunction could mar the fun: outside the post office, Tim’s chain got stuck in a gear sprocket, and although I know how to fix a derailed chain, I couldn’t get this one unstuck. As we stood there attempting to fix it, the postmaster himself came out of the building and pried it back into place for us. I was impressed with his abilities and tremendously grateful for his willingness to leave the office to help us.

We continued on our way, picked up the book, and then sat on the farmer’s porch at Ferns, basking in the late-afternoon western exposure. The kids ate ice cream sandwiches; Holly left me a quarter of hers to finish, which was a bonus I never expect these days.

It was a small and simple excursion, but a reminder of how much fun it is when circumstances just fall into place like that. By bedtime, a bad cold was lodging its way into my head and chest, and biking was the last thing I felt like doing. But I was so glad we’d taken advantage of an open and sunny afternoon. Sometimes I’m disappointed when plans I’ve taken great pains to organize fail to execute, but then I remember spontaneous pleasures like yesterday and I’m reminded of how things tend to balance out, one way or another, as long as you don’t work too hard at it.

Playing hooky

Yesterday I played hooky. After an hour of desk work, I shut down my computer and went for a three-hour bike ride. What a treat.

The sense of novelty that came with being out enjoying the sunshine rather than sitting at my desk reminded me of a tradition from my childhood. Every year, I was allowed to miss one day of school to go into Boston with my mother on the train. We’d go shopping and eat lunch at a restaurant, and although we could have done the same thing on a weekend or a school vacation day, it wouldn’t have been the same. Feeling sneaky, feeling special, the whole sense of doing something exceptional, was what made it so much fun.

And yesterday I discovered that playing hooky still feels special, even though being self-employed means that I no longer have to ask anyone’s permission to spend a day outside instead of at my desk. My 12-year-old niece Phoebe is visiting this week from Pennsylvania, and because she’s such a good athlete, I knew this was my opportunity to do the kind of bike ride my kids are still too small to do. Given the beautiful weather, I grabbed that opportunity.

We set off on the Minuteman Bikeway at 11. We rode steadily for an hour until we reached the Alewife Station at the end of the Bikeway; then we threaded our way along the extension to Davis Square, where we rewarded ourselves with a fabulous lunch of burritos and guacamole at Anna’s Tacqueria in Davis Square. In both directions of the ride, covering 24 miles round-trip, there was so much to see. Flooded swamps and back yards in Bedford and Lexington. The shimmering expanse of Spy Pond in Arlington. Brooks running through the still leafless woods. Along the Bikeway, women pushing infants in strollers, a preschooler using a scooter, dog-walkers whose multiple charges contrasted amusingly in size and breed, a middle-aged father riding his bike with two small kids in a trailer, an elderly couple walking slowly and stiffly together. It wasn’t crowded the way a sunny Saturday on the Bikeway would be, but there were plenty of people out enjoying some exercise and recreation.

By coincidence, I returned to the same town where our bike ride began in the evening for a different reason: I was writing a feature story on a hobby group that meets at the veteran’s hospital in Bedford. I spent the evening talking to some of the men who live in the hospital: men in their seventies and eighties, many missing limbs, some semi-immobilized by strokes or muscular disease, most in wheelchairs. They seemed to be enjoying their club, which was a fly-tying group, but the volunteers who were helping them tie flies all told me the same thing: it’s not about the fishing, it’s about the companionship. The men are just happy to have company and have people taking an interest in them.

I thought about that a lot while I observed the fun they were having. Even the ones who could barely speak or respond were smiling. All of them were once soldiers, deemed fit and able enough to go to war. Now they sit in wheelchairs in an industrial cafeteria with Easter bunny cut-outs pasted to the windows, glad for volunteers who come to help them tie flies for fishing excursions that the men are not physically able to take.

So it was a day of contrasts: physical fitness under a bright sun after three days of rain, all of us out enjoying a beautifully designed recreational trail; and then the VA hospital, with the men so physically compromised but still happy to have company. Yet as different as they were, both experiences reminded me that sometimes there is no more blessed way to spend a sunny day than skipping work or school to bask in the fresh air.

A bike ride, a fall, and a lesson

It was a case of felicitous happenstance that the kids had no school – a professional day – on what turned out to be a beautiful early-spring day, one of the first of the year. The sun shone and temperatures reached nearly sixty degrees. Tim went over to play at a friend’s house; Holly and I headed out for her first solo biking excursion, retracing the mile-long route via gravel footpath to the town Center that she had done many times on the tagalong attached to my bike but never on her own two-wheeler.

I was apprehensive. Holly developed her biking abilities last fall. First we practiced on a paved track, then in a nearby neighborhood with wide, flat, interlacing streets. The footpaths in our town are, by design, rough and unpaved, but this makes them challenging for small riders. The terrain is uneven and the paths wind a lot, so attention to both positioning and steering is critical. I wasn’t at all sure Holly was up to the challenge, but she insisted she wanted to try.

As I pedaled along behind her, it occurred to me that there’s really no way for a beginner to learn to ride a bike without falling a fair amount. No matter how much I coached her along, it was bound to happen. Bicyclists fall; it’s that simple. In general she seemed fairly steady and quite confident, but I knew it was inevitable that she’d take a spill at some point. There’s just no other way to develop biking skills than by practicing and trying and occasionally wiping out.

She did well heading up to the Center. On the way back, she started going a little too fast down a slight slope, lost control, and flew into the gravel. She skinned her knee and the side of her palm. She cried a lot. A police officer who happened to be driving by pulled over, lights flashing, to check on her, which I thought was very kind of him if a bit of an overreaction. For a moment, being a typical twenty-first century parent, I wondered if it was possible he’d say I was doing something wrong. Had I overlooked some obvious safety measure or allowed her in an area where she shouldn’t be biking? But he merely echoed what I had been thinking: Kids learning to ride bikes fall. There’s no way around it.

Holly and I sat on a stone wall until she felt well enough to stand up. Then she said, “I don’t want to bike anymore!”

We were just under a mile from home. “We can walk our bikes if you’d rather,” I offered.

“I want to drive!” she wailed.

I thought about it. Fetching the car wasn’t out of the question. We happened to be across the street from the home of a close friend of ours; I could park Holly there while I biked home to get the car, or I could ask her for a ride. We were also close to the library, and even though I know it’s not ideal on principle to leave kids at the library, I also knew she could rest unnoticed for fifteen minutes while I hurried home for the car.

But I also know how quick Holly is to flare up when she’s upset and how equally quick she is to calm down. Which made me suspect that if I didn’t leap in to find an elaborate solution to the problem – one that involved leaving her and her bike while I hurried home for the car and came back again to pick her up – she would soon get past the feeling that she needed a ride.

I fought the temptation to come up with a complicated solution, something that would assure that Holly would stop crying. I made myself refrain from trying to fix everything instantly. “We can’t drive; we don’t have the car,” I said calmly. “If you don’t feel like biking, why don’t we just walk our bikes for a while?”

I gave her a drink of water and dabbed off the drops of blood with a Kleenex. We started walking. After less than two minutes, she said in a very tear-worn voice, “I want to ride now.”

So we rode the rest of the way home. No more accidents; no more tears. And I had the satisfaction of knowing I’d had a chance to practice overcoming one of my faults as a parent: being too quick to try to fix things when they go wrong. I’d held back, made myself be patient, waited out Holly’s need to go home in the car. I’d suppressed my natural tendency to start making arrangements and devising solutions and generally being as proactive as possible to ensure that everyone is happy and everything works out. “We don’t have the car; let’s just start walking,” I’d said instead. And walking had worked. Walking had calmed Holly down until she was ready to ride again.

It wasn’t merely the age-old lesson of getting back on the horse – or bike – when you’re thrown off, though there was that too: certainly Holly ended the day feeling like a successful bicyclist rather than one whose first excursion had been cut short with a bad fall. And that’s an important one. But for me as a parent, it’s even more valuable to remember not everything that happens to the kids is a problem waiting for me to step in and fix it. This time, fixing wasn’t necessary; only waiting was needed. And waiting was exactly what worked.

Five miles at the start of a sunny Saturday

I don’t usually run in the morning. This is because I like to ride my stationary bike right after I get up and read the newspaper at the same time, and also because usually I don’t want to leave the family at the beginning of the day. However, Holly asked for cottage cheese pancakes for breakfast, which I normally try not to indulge in, but today I really wanted some, so I had a plateful and then convinced myself that the high-protein breakfast was motivating me to head out for a run, and I surely wouldn’t feel nearly so energetic toward the end of a busy Saturday.

So I did my favorite 5-mile route, and what a great morning to be out. I left about 9:30; it was about 62 degrees, sunny, breezy. Lots of bicyclists passed me and a couple of runners, both of whom I recognized. On Russell Street there was a very merry outdoor neighborhood brunch under way, and then a little farther up the hill, Tim’s classmates Claire and Whitney were helping newborn snapping turtles to cross the street safely. This was no big surprise: Claire, at the age of 11, is acknowledged townwide as the patron saint of snapping turtles. Small-town life.

This afternoon, we took Holly and Samantha over to the Nowell Farme neighborhood for their first time biking on real streets. The roads there are quiet, wide, flat and nearly car-free, so they got lots of practice. I forgot to bring my bike but rode Tim’s instead, which was amusing; I felt like a circus clown, but it was still good exercise and a lot of fun. As we rode I told Nancy C. about my e-mail dialog with Judy Blume regarding use of updated anachronisms, a discussion I will replicate in this blog once I get permission from Judy Blume. And having spent an hour biking, even slowly, I’m even more glad my daily run happened early!

The right thing to do now would be take Tim sweatshirt shopping, but neither of us actually wants to go. Holly is away for a couple of hours, and I think I’ll maximize my Holly-free time by writing up the interview with the new children’s librarian instead. Then if I finish soon, read today’s paper, which normally I would have read by this hour but since I didn’t ride the exercycle, I haven’t yet touched.