sophie takes off!

Guess what Sophie did?  She’s riding her bike without the training wheels!  She got the balance part on the first try—she is so cool!  It was that whole iconic moment, the one where the dad is running along, holding up the bike, and then he lets go and the kiddo peddles on, free, and it’s like they have taken off into flight! I guess it’s about as symbolic-of-parenthood moment as there can be, right?  Well, we were all cheering and shouting, and losing our minds.  And she was SO HAPPY.

It’s such a small thing, in the course of a life, to ride a bike.  It hardly seems worth the intensity of the emotions I felt when she got it, but it’s so huge to her.  At six years old, riding a bike is power and freedom and speed and independence.  It’s fantastic!  I guess I feel her triumph in that moment.  She might as well have won the Olympics, the way my heart soared for her!

Of course, after that triumphant moment, she spent three days falling down.

Over and over and over she worked to figure out all the details, how to push off by herself, how to slow down and brake, how to coast, all of it.  She must have fallen over fifty times.  More.  But she would just get back up and do it again.  And again and again.  Only one time did she get frustrated—it was a worse fall than most of the others and she was shaking and flushed from it.  I helped her up, brushed her off and she said, “I just can’t get it!” I suggested she take a break, hey let’s go get a snack or something, but she shook me off.  “No.  I want to do it.”  And she got back on.

I keep thinking about that.  I am SO IMPRESSED with how she sticks with whatever she has set her mind to do. Two summers ago it was cartwheels.  She wanted to do a cartwheel and she practiced every day, tumble after tumble, until she could do a perfect cartwheel, no, a bunch of perfect cartwheels, one after another, across the grass.

This summer it’s biking.  She’s out there right now zipping around on her bike, a bit unsteady on the braking, but just as proud of herself as can be.

And she should be.  She was absolutely NOT taking no for an answer from that bike, or from herself.

Go, Sophie, go!