By Bethany Fitzpatrick
My daughter is a crybaby. There, I said it. A crybaby and a scaredy cat.
Last fall, we bought her a new bike without training wheels for her sixth birthday. I was so excited and almost obsessed with this gift, enchanted by memories of my own girlhood spent flying around Circle Drive on my rusty, second-hand red bike, imagining her shrieks of joy. When she saw her brand new shiny blue bike, she didn’t say a word for a long several minutes. Then she asked rather quietly, “Where are the training wheels?”
Six months later, she’s yet to even try riding it more than a handful of times. All of which were at our insistence and all of which ended in tears. Now her dad is threatening to take her out of swim lessons.
For the second consecutive summer, she absolutely refuses to go down the slide or off the diving board, which is apparently what one third of the class time is devoted to.
I, for one, wouldn’t really worry about this at all, but she can’t advance to the next level without doing this and level three is where they actually learn something besides kicking and blowing bubbles underwater. Her father, on the other hand, is practically beside himself. He insists it is because of wasted money and the embarrassing scenes that punctuate every lesson, but the truth is he can’t stand it that his daughter is such a fraidy cat. He was and still is Boy Reckless.
The stories he tells from his childhood of skipping school (the third grade!) to spend the day at the creek and wrecking his bike at the bottom of steep hills make me absolutely shudder. We both look back on our own childhoods spent jumping into rivers, riding bikes without helmets, and spinning endless circles until falling down dizzy, and we want that for our daughter. Partly because we want it back –that freedom, that magic of childhood, that time of endless summer days without bills to pay. But maybe it’s just clouded in nostalgia.
In reality, though I had a happy childhood, I spent much of my childhood in tears, too, because I was a crybaby, tender-hearted like my daughter. I was also a scaredy cat, afraid of ghosts, shadows, overwhelming emotions, and the authority that the adults around me wielded. I remember my dad forcing me to ride horses. “You control the horse, the horse does not control you!” he’d shout while I clung to the horse in terror as it made circles or broke into a gallop.
I never did get the shiny new bike of my dreams, and I want that for my daughter. I also do want her to experience riding like the wind, buoyant and free. But if she’d rather spend her time looking at picture books and playing with her baby dolls, isn’t that okay, too? After all she is only six years old!
And what I want for her most of all is to feel safe, supported, and respected. Besides, maybe her sense of caution will serve her well when she’s a teenager and hopefully too afraid to drive fast or have unprotected sex. Maybe I’ll pitch it to her dad this way, so we can keep on with the swimming lessons.
Honestly, I don’t really want her to be jumping from bluffs into the river quite yet if ever, and I relish those thirty minutes swimming back and forth by myself while she is doing her lesson. In the water, floating, unencumbered by the weight of motherhood, I have it back at least for a few minutes, some of that childhood freedom.
*****
About the Author