Meg rides a bike

It all started at the St. Jude's Trike-a-thon in late April.

One of the boys that is going off to kindergarten next year, A, rode his bike without training wheels at the Trike-a-thon. Meg didn't seem to notice. However our close friends' son P did and wanted to learn to ride without training wheels. So P, who is 5, took off his training wheels and with quite a lot of determination learned to ride without them. Shortly thereafter his older sister L, who is one of Meg's idols, learned to ride without training wheels too, at age 7.

Now Meg seeing that L and P had learned to ride without training wheels, insisted she could too. We took the bike we had bought last summer and took of the training wheels. This didn't work too well as Meg was getting too tall for the bike already. So after some thought we went to the second hand store and got her a larger bike. It didn't have training wheels. Meg insisted that we shouldn't put any on.

She would try to ride the bike with one of holding on to the back of the seat. Eventually, partially to save my husbands aching back, we moved to holding on to her lightly at about the armpits. She started being able to balance some herself in about a month. Back aches for both parents followed. Then one day while I was out my husband took her out and something clicked. She could ride short distances. The next day Meg could ride independently. The picture is from then. Thank goodness she is wearing a skort.


Yesterday we took a "bike ride" together. By which I mean, I rode my bike slowly, Meg rode her bike often in fits and starts, and daddy ran alongside making sure Meg was doing okay. Meg is still hesitant about starting up and gets panicked and forgets how to stop if she gets going too fast, but she is gaining confidence slowly but surely.

For my husband and I this is a time of pride, happiness, and bittersweetness. With every new thing Meg learns, we wonder, would Drew have been doing it now too?