Look, Mom, No Hands

In the heart of Killarney Town, which sits like an old farmer in his crisp tweed cap to take in his favorite view of the neighboring mountains, there is a gate. Now, to compare this bustling and trendy tourist town with an arthritic, crinkle-eyed soul is, on the one hand, disingenuous. But, truth be told, once you pass through the wrought-iron barrier gate, the din of the car traffic and the holidaymakers drunk on their cheap sugary booze vanishes. In its place, silence. Then the rustle of a beech tree grove greeted by a passing gust of wind. The brisk clip-clop of a horse and carriage. And the sunlight, if it could make a sound, vibrating golden the fine hairs outlining the deer in the distance.

Welcome to the demesne. A castle ground in the distant past and recently bequeathed to the town as a park; it really belongs to prehistoric times. The carpet of ferns shining silver-blue along the pathways turn my head and churn my memories as I cycle past. In her white lab coat, biology 101 lecture hall, Professor Rose speaks passionately in her crisp, scientist diction about gas exchange in the stomata, those tiny brown braille dots on the underside of the compound leaf patterns; it’s a chemical conversation older than the dinosaurs.

The turning of two bicycle wheels beneath me seems to couple well with memory.

The demesne paths are smooth and curved. As I pedal along, I feel fast, like a motorcycle racer who banks right, then left, gracefully and effortlessly as my hand would rise and fall with the wind outside my rolled-down back seat window long ago. I laugh inside. There’s a big difference between me and those daredevils. Speed is not my middle name.

And then I look at my older sons, who are conducting those S-curves with their arms in the air, raised like outstretched wings. No hands! For weeks now, I’ve been cautiously trying to mimic them. On a smooth stretch of pavement, I slowly slide my fingers back until just the tips touch the handles. So far, so good. So light is the contact that I feel the gentle give of the textured rubber grip underneath. I feel my upright posture and the shift of weight on my seat. But as soon as I try to take my hands off—yikes! The bike wrenches suddenly to one side, and I throw them back around the handles, heart pounding.

When I was the same age as our youngest son, I had a couple of dreadful falls on the hill beside my house: skinned knees and elbows, a cracked tooth. Once, I was sure I was going so fast that I would lift off the ground and make it to heaven rather than crashing through my neighbor’s gate at the bottom of the hill. Luckily, they swung it open just in time and caught me. Which seems impossible, come to think of it. Can you imagine catching a kid on a runaway bicycle? Perhaps that was a dream to pick up and reconfigure the gritty pieces of those very real falls?

What is clear is that I have a fear of falling off my bike.

Our youngest covers similar fears with the trusty guise of practicality. “I prefer riding one-handed anyway. It’s much more useful.” And I love to see his confidence growing. (Yes, we set off for hundreds of miles of cycling with an eight-year-old with almost no biking experience.) First, he managed a quick scratch of his cheek. Weeks later, he could give a prolonged thumbs-up to the pedestrians we passed. Now, I grin when I see him put a sassy hand on the hip while he navigates turns, or lift both feet off the pedals in a full split to careen through puddles. But I’m pretty sure—in my motherly all-knowingness—that, like I am, he is dying to be able to ride hands-free like his brothers.

Today, in that magical, timeless demesne, the two of us did it.

We were transformed from four-legged creatures into those that walk on two. The feel of it! All those wobbles on my miss-starts; they were just the feel of a first step. I had only to take the next step in order to keep going. Memory served me sudden flashbacks of my babies learning to stand, learning to walk. Those tentative, toppling confrontations with balance. Those countless falls, and then… a couple of steps. Then more! And now I am running; I am soaring, truly in flight, and the corners of my mouth are my outstretched wings. I am joy! I am a new being!

To be released from fear is truly like taking to the sky.

We teach our boys that fear is a natural protector from harm. Many circumstances that create a physical surge of warning within us are genuinely dangerous. For instance, I specifically remember this discussion in light of a high cliff in the Dominican Republic that attracted boys to dare each other to jump from ever-increasing stupidly high heights into the shallow river below. “Listen to your fear then, kids!”

Much more often, though, our fears are unwarranted. They become excuses that spin scratchily around our thoughts like a dismal song lyric on repeat. They tell us we aren’t capable, daren’t try, are likely to get hurt. And those feelings, oh do they ever cause us to suffer! Prolonged suffering that is often far worse than a scraped-up knee. Suffering inside even before the first baby step toward that which we are confronting on the outside!

So, next time we hear that fearful voice, perhaps we can ask,

“What are you afraid of?”