My son learned to bicycle today.

I didn’t learn until I was six, and he’s just shy of 5 1/4, so I have no reason to have been as disappointed/exasperated as I was.

He’s been able to move around on a cycle since before he could even walk. At a year old, he’d on his balance bicycle in the streets of San Francisco weaving between people at the farmer’s market. I became too much the asian parent, and thought he’d be cycling as soon as he was able to mount a bicycle with pedals — the first step to getting into Harvard on a scholarship for cycling 😀

But shortly after he turned three, I left the garage door open one night after emptying the trunk and my eMTB was stolen—I’d ride it past the Golden Gate Bridge to Tunnel Tops every other weekend with him on a KidsRideShotgun. And then a month later, we’d buy a house at the end of the street that climbed up a steep ravine in Oakland.

After that, I’d have to strap his Woom 2 to the back of the cargo ebicycle and search for a flat place he could practice, and there wasn’t anything truly like that for miles. So I’d settle on some playground and such travails became rare.

This day, in order to delay his bath, he asked to go to Montclair Park. We started near a basketball hoop nestled between a skate ramp and a softball field—the largest flat paved area I could find—as I steadied myself for at least an hour of back-breaking pushing and jogging. The only difference this time was I simply could not remove the pedals since I was too lazy to have brought the pedal wrench. Not that I didn’t try when he asked, but I recently swapped my turn-of-the-century Leatherman Wave for a more pocketable multitool which didn’t have pliers.

Two kids, a little older than Benjamin, were racing each other around the skate ramp on their bikes—both had training wheels strapped to the back. So Benjamin had me push-freewheel him around the park until we eventually gravitated to a different area near the geese poop. He would make circles in the area while pushing with his feet. It reminded me of the space I taught myself to ride. I was exhausted.

At this point, before I settled down and let him struggle alone/figure things out for himself, I gave two pieces of advice. The first was, “There’s a reason why people say, ‘It’s just like riding a bicycle’— only you can learn it, I can’t do it for you. But once you do, you’ll never forget it. It’s just really hard in the beginning and you just need to practice and work hard.”

(As I was saying the last part, a little asian girl overheard it and emphasized the need to work hard as she pedaled by. Benjamin said she was younger than him, but in a matter-of-fact manner because unnecessary competition and comparisons are for stupid adults, not for smart children.)

He would give me a play-by-play of his attempts to get back to the capability he had two years ago and I would let him take two five minute breaks involving eating candy with Capri-Sun and watching YTKids — two only because I had asked him to grab a couple of pieces of candy from his Halloween haul before heading out, and he had taken me literally.

One moment, I was on my iPhone reading whatever excuse we have for “News” today. The next, I was heads up listening to the scream of pure joy as Benjamin pedaled long lazy circles on his bike as if he had always known how to do this. He stopped to tell me how he was going to tell mommy that he had figured it out, then he was off doing more circles. I ended up chasing him on the cargo bike all the way to the kids playground where he finally fell down because it was sloped on the way there and he had forgotten how to use the handbrake to stop himself in all his excitement.

(In the 1970’s, shortly after we moved into the new house, I asked my dad to remove the training wheels on my bicycle. He moved the cars out of the garage which created a flat space. I made those similar circles in there until I finally had the guts to pedal. Up until now, I was both proud of my resolve to take the training wheels off, while regretful I had waited until I was six. Now, as a parent, I think about the effort my father must have made remove the rusty bolts from the bicycle and clear the garage for me.)

The second piece of advice was, “In order to stay balanced on the bicycle, you have to keep moving.” A smart man once said that life is like that.