The Best Birthday Present Ever

The night I turned eleven, my parents blindfolded me and told me to get into the back of the car. We cruised in the 18-foot Lincoln through the chill New England night. “Don’t look!” my mom said. “You know where we’re going, don’t you? She knows where we’re going,” she said to my dad. “No, I don’t!” I protested giddily.

We parked and I peeked. Bill and Andy’s bike shop. This was late December. “Well, you said you never got summer presents because your birthday was in the middle of winter.” (What a rude kid I was!) “We want to get you a ten-speed.” Shocked, I stumbled inside where we were greeted by a gentleman, possibly Bill or Andy. He steered us right over to a fleet of gleaming, impossibly fast-looking Raleighs. “This one looks about right.” It was. It was the most beautiful bike I had ever seen. Sparkling blue-gray, nice cushy saddle, sleek, skinny wheels. I think it cost a hundred and twenty dollars, an astronomical sum. I fell in love, we took it home.

I rode the next day, for hours and hours, past my dog who nearly broke his neck barking at me from the end of his rope, with mittens on in the icy air, around the block a thousand times. It was freedom and power I’d never known, like flying, like a carnival ride except I was the one making it go.

My dog got hit by a car three days later, on New Year’s Eve. My sister says I tried to kick the police officer who came to the door to tell us; I have no memory of it whatsoever. It was the first time I was depressed, and I didn’t know what to do with that sick, useless feeling. I just wanted to get away from it, like it would disappear if I went far enough, fast enough. I rode, and rode, until I started to feel better.

Now I know that’s what always works. I need exercise for my twitchy brain like I need food for my growling stomach. That’s why I did the triathlon, that’s why I get up at 6 a.m., sneak away from the babies, and run. I can’t bike for hours now because the wee one needs me, but when I do get away even for twenty minutes I get that same feeling of freedom from everything that binds me.

A few weeks ago the Husband of the Blog asked me what my inseam was, comparing it to his to mock my shortness, so I thought. Later that day he came home and pulled the tiniest road bike I’ve ever seen out of the back of the car. It’s white, with extra-small wheels so they don’t bump into the midget frame when I turn, and it weighs less than my baby.

It took me a while to figure out the “intuitive” shifting, and the seat leaves my nether regions whinging (“It’s what all the female racers use,” the guy at the shop said--well then! *Insert comment inappropriate for my family blog here.*), but when I’m in stride, on top of that big fat gear, it’s the same euphoria I remember from my eleventh birthday. And to be able to have that back, to be thirty with two kids, a penchant for migraines and a career crisis sniffing at my heels, but able to hop on and fly away for a while--why, that’s just priceless.

Thanks, hon. From the bottom of my jock-girl heart.