A Beautiful Life

At the end of the summer, my husband and I discovered e-bikes, bikes that provide electrical assistance, at my age, a welcome boon even though I’ve been riding a bicycle almost as long as I can remember.

My first two-wheeler was a hand-me-down from cousins who lived in a neighborhood near Washington, D.C. that in 1959 seemed exotic because their playmate across the street was an Indian girl with a golden ring pierced through each ear.

The pint-sized bike they passed down held no less enchantment. It had thick tires, maroon fenders with white tips, and was small enough that my six-year old legs could brush the ground when I sat on the seat. It had no training wheels, so my dad held the back of the seat and raced along beside me until I was flying down the sidewalk on my own.

When that bike was too small, he took me to the hardware store where we found a used bike with blue fenders trimmed with white pin stripes. I also picked out plastic, pink streamers to stick in the ends of the handlebars. The boys on my street clipped playing cards to their spokes with clothespins causing a noise like a motorcycle, so I did the same. Day after day, I explored my neighborhood discovering new streets and how to find my way home.

In fourth grade, I got a brand-new turquoise Schwinn for my birthday. It had the graceful swoop of a girl’s frame, plus a headlight with a built-in generator, so I could ride home after dark. The basket in front was just like the Witch’s in The Wizard of Oz.

I rode that bike all over town. To the ten-cent store on Union St. To Central Park where I buzzed by the toddler equipment and straight to the big kid swings under the pines.

In junior high I had a friend who lived down the steep hill that went past my church. One day, pumping home, I realized I’d reached the top of the rise, my body completely unaware of the effort it had spent.

My mind had been elsewhere, taking in the scenery, daydreaming, high above reality’s cares. Pedaling, pedaling, my bike had become my Pegasus.

By high school, my territory expanded. On hot days, I’d ride to Union College, through the iron gate and across campus until I came to Jackson Gardens, its entry ensconced in a jungle of rhododendron. I’d clunk down the stone path and dismount where the trees parted, revealing a manicured perennial bed edged in red salvia, blue ageratum, and white baby’s breath. Walking my bike on the grassy path between the flowers, I’d come to rest on a bench where I inhaled the sweet breath of summer. An arched foot bridge led me over a trickling stream and out of this hidden paradise.

The summer before college, I worked as a typist at the General Electric plant on Nott St. down by the Mohawk River. In the early morning, I’d put on a sundress I could pedal in, my hair in a ponytail, and glide downhill in the fresh, misty air.

At the height of afternoon’s heat, I’d head uphill towards home, traversing shady side streets, past grand old houses owned by General Electric executives, and doctors who worked at nearby Ellis Hospital. Daily, I’d select my favorite manse. Maybe the one with walls of gray stucco and a bright blue door. Or the one with the side screen porch that overlooked a bank of ferns. Perhaps the green Victorian with the wraparound porch highlighted by orange daylilies.

Although I never imagined I’d live in a mansion like these, they represented the quiet life I contemplated somewhere, someday in my own little house under a leafy canopy. It was a life I couldn’t fill in, but I knew it would be beautiful. And I knew I’d recognize it, when beyond the fog of the present, there it was waiting for me, in the clarity of the future, a life just for me, planned, perfect, like the dreams you can miraculously remember and recount in great detail upon waking.

The morning before my first e-bike ride, I was sorting through old family photos. In musty albums, I found my Memaw and her two sisters as young woman. Even in black and white, you could see the vitality of their youth, the rosy lips, the thick hair piled on their heads in Gibson-Girl topknots. There were photos of my mom as a chubby toddler posed with a basket of posies.                                  

Another of my mom as a young woman, holding her younger brother’s first born. I see the wistfulness in her face, knowing, at the time she was childless, wishing for a babe of her own.

Then there I am in a photo as a nine-month old baby girl on the rug next to an Airedale terrier. I see the insecurity in my face. Who is the lady sitting next to me in saddle shoes and bobby socks? Who is that guy petting the puppy? They are my new adoptive parents, grateful beyond measure, yet obviously as unsure as the baby.

Every photograph catalogues the past that became my future. My husband as a handsome young man, bare-chested, standing beside his first car, a yellow VW bug. Our children playing with kittens on the steps of our first house in the shadow of a giant oak. Me standing with a class of immigrants from exotic places like India. These are the dreams I pedaled towards on my winged turquoise Schwinn.

For several years now, I haven’t ridden a bike, my legs no longer able to climb the hills to my house in the forest. But mounted on a rented e-bike, it’s like I’m back in fourth grade, able to ascend any incline.  And I’m reminded of that moment when my father raced along beside me until I was flying down the sidewalk on my own.

Looking back, I was never on my own, especially not for the nightmares you never record in photos.

That said, it’s been a beautiful life, a life I could not have pedaled without a powerful God.