[y66]

To a Daughter Leaving Home

by Linda Pastan

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

from Carnival Evening. © Norton, 1998.

[Vampyr]

Eight is pretty old to be learning to ride a bike.

[kenberg]

This message appeared four times because it kept sating that it wasn't posting. System down or whatever. I'll edit out the last.

Ah, misery loves company. I see that Andrei had a similar problem on another thread.

[kenberg]

Vampyr, on 2013-May-24, 14:46, said:

Eight is pretty old to be learning to ride a bike.

Better late than never. Bike riding was a very big thing with me and when my granddaughter was about 8 and had not yet learned, I set out to teach her. Unlike in the poem, she did in fact take a spill, a fairly substantial one. I figured that when her parents found out I would never be trusted again. We got back to the house, she was asked how in went and she repiled enthusiastically. To this day I believe her parents are unaware of the spill she took. Every child gets to have a secret or two.

[kenberg]

Yup, again.

[kenberg]

And, to summarize...

[Vampyr]

kenberg, on 2013-May-24, 16:12, said:

Unlike in the poem, she did in fact take a spill, a fairly substantial one.

I learned by myself and must have fallen about 100 times before I mastered it.

[FM75]

Wow!

The daughter left home at 8 years old on a bike!

Maybe the title of the poem could be better.

Then again, maybe she was trying to escape an over-protective single parent and already knew at age 8, with all of her friends masters of two wheels... [ok, unlikely...] Did she ride successfully to her father's house, and the court based on that and things unsaid, alter the custody arrangement?

Thought provoking, if you take the title seriously.

[PassedOut]

Vampyr, on 2013-May-24, 17:13, said:

I learned by myself and must have fallen about 100 times before I mastered it.

I've taken some nasty falls even after I mastered it...

[kenberg]

PassedOut, on 2013-May-24, 23:12, said:

I've taken some nasty falls even after I mastered it...

So have I, usually through enormous stupidity. One of my most enjoyable trips was island hopping in Puget Sound. There was a conference at the University of Washington, I went out early and took my bike. I rode from Seattle up to a ferry, and went from island to island. Seattle is actually a great place to ride, but not all of the island roads were great. I was on a narrow one with high speed traffic. Stupidly looking back at traffic, I rode off the road and dropped a ways into a pile of rocks . I bounced better then than I do now but I was pretty sore for a while.

Not the first spill, not the last. But it was a great ride. After a few days I got to Vancouver Island, rode down to Victoria, and took the Love Boat (the actual ferry, I think, from the tv show) back to Seattle.


The granddaughter mentioned earlier is now in college. She took a multi-day bike trip while she was in high school, and I was very pleased to hear her mention in conversation that her grandfather taught her to ride.

My first oveernigh bike trip was when I was thirteen. My friend Roger and I packed up our old single speeds (Montgomery Wards for me, I believe Schwinn for him) and rode from St. Paul to a park on the St.Croix, staying for a few days. Very very nice. Racing with Roger I took a substantial spill. I got up, expecting concern from my friend. He was doubled over in laughter. If you want concern, get a dog, I guess.

And, btw, it's good to have a thread devoted to such hedonism. Let the zealots solve the problems of the world, where's my bike?

[PassedOut]

kenberg, on 2013-May-25, 06:47, said:

So have I, usually through enormous stupidity.

That's been my problem too.

The town where I grew up sits on a steep hill leading down to Chequamegon Bay of Lake Superior. When I was twelve, I was zooming down the hill getting ready to make a sharp left turn when I saw a girl I was eager to impress. I waved to her, turned the corner, and ran right into the rear of a car. I landed on the roof of the car. Neither the driver nor the girl was impressed.

Another time I was riding too fast, hit a patch of sand, could not stop, and went over a rocky embankment. That really hurt.

Now that I'm thinking of it, I can recall quite a few stupid things I did biking, skiing, and (alas) driving as teenager. It seems like pure chance that I and many of my friends lived to adulthood. Some did not.

Back to biking, that's sort of our family sport. Two of my sisters race regularly in senior divisions, and my youngest sister and her husband still like to go biking in the Alps and the Pyrenees, something I'm way too old to do. In truth, I was way too old for that even when I was her age...

[kenberg]

PassedOut, on 2013-May-25, 07:45, said:

In truth, I was way too old for that even when I was her age...

Or, as I sometimes put it, I actually was never what I used to be.

Yogi Berra: A lot of the things that I said I didn't say.

[PassedOut]

kenberg, on 2013-May-25, 09:11, said:

Or, as I sometimes put it, I actually was never what I used to be.

Happy it's not just me!

[barmar]

FM75, on 2013-May-24, 17:28, said:

Thought provoking, if you take the title seriously.

Because poetry never incorporates metaphors, does it?

[Winstonm]

Evokes memories of The Beatles' "She's Leaving Home".

Quietly closing the bedroom door
leaving the note
that she hoped would say more