Wheels Keep on Turning

Our youngest rode a bike on Sunday. His first journey went straight into a fence. The next was into a bench. Eventually he learned to turn and brake if for no other reason than the lack of bandaids. The bike still has training wheels, and in a few days he will go back to occupational therapy to work on jumps and landings, balance and coordination. He moves ever so cautiously through the world and tells me each day, as I leave for work, about the dangers of the outside. Around the pool during holidays he clung to the side and made sure never to wander in even though the water came up to his chest. For him to get on a bike and to start to pedal without consequences is to visit a foreign planet. It might have been his older brother's excellence with a bike that got him to ride. Perhaps it was his grandmother's kind words, or that the bike was new and blue, or maybe just simply that it was a sunny day and he finally felt old enough to move. We all pedal in life at different rates, reach milestones at different times. Getting there usually takes a few crashes along the way. I learned to write after college from the sports pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. They had the style of conveying the facts with the slightest of winks, that you had to tell the truth, but always make sure that you leave in the parts that amuse you. It was a style I could mimic, a structure I could use. I reached writing late and perhaps not well, but like my son on the bike I am glad I reached it at all. A couple of nights ago, I sat across from a father whose son has dysgraphia which is what kept me from writing, and when I heard his tales of frustration, of being able to know far more than you can say, of salvation with computers and caring teachers, and of the hurt when trying to get out the words; it brought back such memories of a youth struggled. I could also relate to the father since I am now one too. And this means giving the push on your son's back to get him started on a bike with the knowledge that there is a pretty good chance he will hit a fence. But there are no bandaids for fathers. There are just occasional sunny days that you need to cherish when your kid starts turning the wheel.

Folklore

 

 

We arrived a little early for the Discovery Museum's Class, and as my son and I have done this wet winter, we waited in the rain. At five, he is at the point where our adventures together are more interesting whether they are trips to Oakland’s Fairyland or to the Cow Palace for the Reptile Expo. Going to the Discovery Museum to take a class in building Leprechaun traps was a bit like both.

There was a bin of trap supplies - tape, straws, nets, cardboard, and popsicle sticks - from which he grabbed a fistful of parts. The other parents, mostly dads, were eagerly arranging things for their kids, but I very much wanted the trap to be my son's, and so in the end we were left was a pile of scraps hung together by tape. The only way it was going to trap a leprechaun was to confuse it.  The trap looked sad, in a Charlie Brown design kind of way, and we took it over to the testing table to see if it would work on small, wind-up robots.

The robots, lacking higher intellect and an Irish disposition, completely ignored the trap and scurried of to another kid's trap that at least was sticky. My son didn’t mind and his project now waits on top of our mantle fully ready to be deployed in a couple of weeks.

Of course, the other thing we are trying to catch in a couple of weeks is a spot in a kindergarten, which at this time seems almost more mythical than an Irish Fairy. The hunt is one of recommendations and reviews, interviews and information sessions, and tours and teachers to the point where it seems less of a trial of intellect but a journey of endurance.

To complete it, we used words as our tape and popsicle sticks.

Anyone trying to get into these schools uses what they can, and if your child is wonderfully presentable you go with that. But if perhaps your child is a bit normal then you have a great deal of explaining to do.

My wife and I became an editor/writer team, and we searched for adjectives like “cerebral" while trying to figure out how to say “does not like talking to strangers” without using terms like “aloof.”

We wrote to friends a lifetime ago, and met nice people everywhere we visited.

We said “wonderful" a great deal and sprinkled “thank you” like the winter rain.

Our son also started to write. While his classmates wrote about peanut butter and unicorns, he finished his first book on Kryptonite that was dedicated to his younger brother and whose back cover had a bar code he drew. He is starting to formulate his own epic journey, and I hope which ever galaxy he visits, super hero he thwarts, or Sith Lord he trains that he, too, sprinkles in the “thank you” along the way.

For even if you manage to catch a leprechaun, you still need to charm it. Words are your best bet unless you have a unicorn or perhaps a peanut butter sandwich.

Sometime soon the rain must go away and so will our little adventures of preschool. The larger beasts of kindergarten are yet to come. I hope we have tales of dragons.