Not-so-easy rider

I must confess, I didn't think the Little Guy had it in him.

As I've noted before, Elijah is not exactly athletically inclined. Unlike most American parents, though, I'm fine with this. I can think of few things I enjoy less than watching team sports, and I certainly have better ways to spend the next decade and a half of Saturday mornings (and weekday evenings and Sunday afternoons) than schlepping my kid to a soccer field or baseball diamond or whatever to watch a bunch of overinvolved parents scream as their hyperscheduled kids chase after a ball.

But I'm a huge fan of fitness, and of unstructured play and being outdoors and running barefoot in the grass and getting knee scrapes and bug bites and maybe even the tiniest bit of a suntan.

And I'm a believer that being a kid in the summer should include bike riding. That's why, way back when Elijah turned 2, we dutifully purchased a classic red-and-white Radio Flyer tricycle. Better not wait any longer, we thought, because he's already big enough to wear it out in a single summer. And soon he'll be moving up to bicycles.

Anyone want a like-new Radio Flyer tricycle?

It's still sitting in our garage, this pristine piece of Americana. It's virtually unused, although finally, at age 5 1/2 or so, Elijah did actually get the hang of pedaling it.

Now that he's nearly 6, he at last seems to be enjoying wheeled toys (his made-for-toddlers scooter is his favorite). And he's been making progress on physical skills in general, which means we have arrived at what the developmental professionals would call a "teachable moment." This became obvious to me a few weeks ago at Target, when I pulled a small, training-wheel-equipped bike off the display rack and plopped it down in the middle of an aisle.

"Hey, Elijah, want to try?" I said in my highest-pitched, oh-honey-you'll-just-love-this mommy voice. (It's the same voice I use to try to get him to eat healthy food, which is why I wasn't expecting much in the way of a response.)

Never underestimate the speed at which a novice bicyclist can pedal down the aisle of a discount store. Stunned at the fact he could even stay upright, I caught up with him just before he would have knocked down a display of fully inflated beach balls.

I thought perhaps it was a fluke, but when we repeated virtually the same scene a week or two later in a Wal-Mart, it became clear that it was time to brave the bicycle world.

The story of how we came to purchase a top-notch bicycle for a relatively bargain-basement price is long enough for an entire blog post in itself, but I'll spare you. Let's just say it involved a dedicated daddy who shops the clearance sales, knows which stores stock which items and never neglects to use the coupons in the Entertainment guidebook. And it did NOT involve any discount stores (which is good, because we just might be on a list of banned customers after those in-store pedaling escapades!).

So the bottom line is this: We have achieved a bicycle as well as a little boy who is already enjoying it despite himself (in the presence of the bicycle, he goes through cycles of excitement and apprehension and fear and joy faster than those spokes can spin). And thanks to the fact that we live in an area laced with paved trails that go through woods and alongside fields and over creeks and to parks and school playgrounds and even swimming pools, I think we have this summer-fun thing in the bag.

Here are a few shots of Elijah's first time out on his new bike:

Getting started ...


On a roll ...


A decision looms as a fork in the path approaches ...



... and failure to navigate the turn leads to a tumble and tears.



Overall, though, it was a very happy day in the life of a little boy.

Is there any room left on the Susan Boyle bandwagon?

If so, I'd like to squeeze on.

Usually, I'm skeptical of YouTube crazes, Internet celebrities and social networking fads (OK, yes, I did the "25 Things" meme on Facebook, but that's it. Honest). I haven't even signed on to Twitter yet, so I'm obviously not a jump-on-the-bandwagon person. (If you don't know what Twitter is, you will soon. Trust me on this.)

So when coworkers began buzzing about the Susan Boyle performance more than a week ago, I tuned it out. Exaggeration, I thought.

I was wrong. So please forgive me for being the 1 millionth (or is it 10 millionth?) blogger to post a link to this. You may well have already seen this, or at the very least, read about it. But I suspect there are maybe three or four regular readers of this blog who have not (I won't name names here, to protect the pop-culture innocent). Even Elijah was absolutely captivated, and I think it's safe to say that performances of music from "Les Miserables" by middle-aged women don't typically captivate 5-year-old boys.

So please, if you haven't yet seen Susan Boyle's performance on the April 11 broadcast of "Britain's Got Talent," click here. Read the article first, then watch the video.

It is one of the most uplifting things I have ever seen, and it will change your day. I promise.

This is just to say ...

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

-- William Carlos Williams

If you ever sat through a high school English lit class, you probably remember that poem. And if you went on to a liberal arts college, you probably did everything you could to forget it after an hourlong deconstruction of it. (Short version: Three stanzas, 12 lines, imagist, concrete picture, deeper meaning, unanswered questions, sensory language, domestic relations, nature of forgiveness. See? I've just saved you thousands of dollars in tuition.)

I plead guilty to being one of the millions who rolled their eyes every time a WCW poem came up in class. Who cares who ate the plums in the icebox? And honestly, does so much depend upon a red wheelbarrow, glazed with rain water, beside the white chickens?

At the time, I thought not.

Over the years, though, I came to appreciate Williams' poetry. I chalked this up to maturity, to the deeper appreciation of language and imagery that comes with age. No one, I thought, really cared much about poetry in his youth.

Then came Elijah. And once again, I am forced to reconsider what I always assumed about little boys.

Yes, he's rambunctious, and fidgety, and often downright squirrely. Then, out of the blue, he'll stun me with a surprisingly sophisticated drawing or a request for me to read him poetry or to put on the HBO "Classical Baby" poetry show.

Which is how I came to find these on the refrigerator door one morning:





Don't those plums just look delicious?

So sweet, and so cold.