Donny, Going On Your Own

I got my first bike for my birthday — a Huffy, blue and silver. It was a big deal. For the longest time, I could only ride on the driveway, which was slightly on an incline. I’d glide down the gravel, using my legs to keep myself up, the way training wheels worked. That was enough.

But this day, a nice summer day, Dad let me go out on the road. Mom and Helen were in a different part of the yard. Dad held the back of the seat and ran with me. The road was smoother and longer than the driveway — more runway. We’d tried many times before, but this last time, he let go and didn’t tell me.

I was still pedaling. I didn’t know.

Maybe twenty feet away from him, he yelled: “Donny, you’re going on your own!”

I was. I was pedaling. I started to veer toward the long summer grass and weeds in the ditch and drifted into them and tipped over, probably from excitement. But then I was able to just get back up into the middle of the road and pedal back to my Dad no problem.

And every time from then on, I could do it.

Our range limit was still the driveway for a couple more years after that. The road was one of the least busiest roads, but there would be an occasional farm truck and of course a tractor. Mom and Dad wanted us safe. Our borders would slowly expand, year by year, but that summer day — that let-go, that twenty feet, that crash into the weeds and the knowing that came after — that was the day I learned.

Because of my Dad.