Parrothead Ramblings

Next thing you know, she's graduating from high school.

Today Mateo took the training wheels off Ladybug's bicycle. A childhood landmark has been reached.

It's happening before my very eyes. I just know that I'm going to blink, and she's going to be standing there in a wedding gown.

Watching her ride off on that thing brought back bicycling memories of my own. My Dad and I don't have a lot of history. He split when I was about seven, and I only saw him during vacations and the like from then on. But he did teach me to ride a bicycle, and I remember it well. I believe it was 1961, a few years before the divorce. Hell, I never had the luxury of training wheels. We probably couldn't afford them. My Dad procured a couple of identical old beater bikes from somewhere, and managed to make one useable bike from the two of them. Well, that is if you don't count the seat. We didn't have one. To my Dad, that was just a minor inconvenience. He took an old towel or something, folded it up, and sat it on that pole that sticks up where the seat is supposed to be. In retrospect, it sounds like something that Vlad the Impaler would make his kid ride, but at the time, I was just glad to have wheels. I was six. Who needs to sit?

We made a lot of runs across the front yard of our home in Roswell, New Mexico. All of them ending with me sprawled across the lawn with a bicycle on top of me, but none the worse for wear. The run that ended the day's trials is the one that stands out for me.

If you were around in those days, you know that water meters were mostly out in the front yard, near the sidewalk. They consisted of a gauge plumbed into the water line to your house, and covered with a big round steel plate that said "City of Roswell" in raised letters. That's where my last run of the day ended.

It was a total face plant. Horrible. There was massive head trauma and blood loss, ambulances, emergency rooms, and surgeons with those shiny things on their heads. My mother weeping, my father shaking his head. That's where my addled brain went, anyway. What I really had was a busted lip, and I swallowed the missing piece. Oh, and a cool red mark that said "City" across my cheek. All that other stuff was on that night's episode of Dr. Kildare.

At some point over the next few days, I learned to ride that bicycle. I wonder if my Mom and Dad stood in the front yard, watching me ride off down the street, and had the same thoughts I've had as I watched my children and now my grandchild ride off down the street? I need to ask that question.

Mom left us in July. Dad and I don't talk a lot. Birthdays, holidays, that sort of thing. He's 83 now, so I guess I'd better ask him soon if I'm ever going to know. And I'd better send him a couple of snapshots of his great-granddaughter, riding off down the street. There's a good chance he won't make it to the driver's license, graduation, and wedding gown.
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