A time to let go

I was 10 when I got a shiny red Hero bicycle as my birthday gift. She came home on a Saturday and my cycling lessons began the next day. Pops gently hoisted me onto the seat, and holding the handlebars steady walked beside me as I practiced peddling. Our long cement driveway was perfect for the purpose, and after I mastered the trick of not allowing my feet to slide off the pedal, we graduated to the road outside our home.

Pops would patiently hold the cycle, while I pedaled up and down the road. I was expected to learn to balance myself, but when someone is holding the cycle steady, there is no way of knowing if could do so or not. This went on for weeks— Pops walking beside me not relinquishing his hold on the handlebars, me dutifully pedaling along. My friends who had got cycles around the same time as I did were cycling, but I was still being pushed along — too scared to allow Pops to let go, and not being encouraged to try it out on my own either.

Then one day, I decided I wanted more. I wanted to pedal faster. I tried picking up speed, but Pops couldn’t keep up, and asked me to slow down. I did. But the very next day, I tried it again, and again. On the fourth day, my need for speed got the better of me, and I refused to slow down when Pops asked me to. Huffing beside me, he asked me to slow down again, and when I did not, he uttered the only threat I ever remember him making to me — “Slow down, or I will leave you.”

My answer was to push down harder on the pedals. I never expected him to actually let go, but he did.

I flew down the road, experiencing a freedom I never knew could exist.

Then I reached the end of the road, hit a boulder and fell.

The cuts were minor- nothing that some Dettol, a sprinkling of Nebasulf and a few kisses couldn’t cure.

The next day, Pops started teaching me to turn, to slow down and to dismount. By the end of the week, I had joined my friends in cycling all over the colony.

It is important to protect your children. But it is equally important to let them make mistakes and pick them up when they fall.

A time to hold on, and

A time to let go.