Skinned Knees
I fell while riding my bike today. OK, I wasn’t actually riding. I was more standing astride the bike, at a busy intersection, but luckily on the sidewalk. While I’ve mostly mastered balance while moving, I seem to have some problems while standing still. My knee oozed rather than bled, with bright red spots springing to the surface and sliding into the curve of my knee.
Luckily, I knew there were knee-sized Band-aids and Neosporin at home. When I picked Ben up from school after his weekend with his dad, he limped like a peg-legged pirate. His knee was covered with a square of gauze, skull and cross bones drawn on the tape.
“What happened to you?” I asked with a mix of concern and amusement.
“Fell off my skateboard,” he said, in his best tough-guy voice. He was scraped down his arm and hand, too.
“Where were your pads?”
“I couldn’t find them at daddy’s, and me and Ethan went skating in the park for the morning. On the way back to Tiffani’s, I got going too fast, tried to do a trick and fell. There were some people gardening in their yards and they helped me get cleaned up.”
This is the moment of truth for me. I hear something pretty upsetting from Ben, and I have to decide whether to let my shock and disapproval show, or let it slide and try to address it with Brett later. Shock and disapproval have their place; he needs to know that some things aren’t safe. And if Brett isn’t gonna protect him, then Ben needs even more common sense than he otherwise would. But I run the risk of making Ben feel like he can’t tell me what really happens, or that somehow he’s responsible for making problems for Brett.
On the other hand, trying to address it with Brett is more than useless. I forgot this for a moment, and sent him an email: “Why didn’t you tell me about Ben’s injuries? Why wasn’t he wearing his pads?” I know, I could have been less accusatory.
While I typed this on my blackberry, Ben went on: “Daddy was at Tiffani’s paying bills, so I called him and he came around with the car.” Shock and horror must have shown on my face, because he quickly added, “He was only a few blocks away.”
Oy, now I’ve gone and done both. Might as well go all the way, “Ben, you know that you need knee and elbow pads with the skateboard. You need to have those when you ride. If you don’t have them, don’t ride, or call me and I’ll bring some to you.”
I did, of course, get a choice response from Brett including how skinned knees are no big deal (true), how I should have Band-aids on hand (I did, just not in my car), and how he teaches Ben to be an athlete, not an “out of shape spectator.” (Really? You need to dig at my “shape?”)
Brett was equally choice about the last time I skinned my knee. Knees, actually. A few years ago, I went out for a business dinner with a big group. I met my friend Katy for a drink before, and as we walked between the bar and the restaurant, my new heels caught on the curb and I went down hard on the bare skin under my skirt. It hurt. A lot. And all through dinner my knees throbbed while I tried to talk about Congress and federal budgets. For weeks, they crusted and oozed and stuck to the inside of my pants.
Years later—YEARS!—Brett told me he never believed the story about my knees. This was in the heat of his insistance that I had cheated on him. I guess he thought I was on my knees in the parking lot while my boss ordered appetizers inside? Seriously, what grown woman skins her knees while cheating on her husband? What does he think the world of government workers is like? Doesn’t he know we are all dreary, gray bureaucrats, not tarts giving hummers in a gravel lot?
There’s a book about raising Jewish children (but good for any children) called The Blessing of a Skinned Knee. It preaches giving your children room to fall down, to fail, and not expecting them to be good at everything all the time. I mean, as adults, we aren’t expected to be able to do EVERYTHING well, but kids are expected to be athletic, charming, mathematic, literate, musical, all at the same time. Why should they?
And really, why should I? I absolutely believe that I ought to make lots of money, keep a clean house, be part of the PTA, entertain the kids, have fabulous dinner parties, etc., etc., etc. In my own mind, I am supposed to be super mom, super employee, super wife, and super maid. Well, super wife is off the list, replaced by the struggles of being super ex-wife. I guess I missed on that front. And maybe that is the real skinned knee, oozing and scabbing and bleeding again and again. May it be a blessing.
Bike Rides and Other Things You Never Forget
“I don’t think I can do it.” You could hear the fear in my voice as I stood astride the beach cruiser bike my sister-in-law had rented for the week.
“I’ll help you. You can do it, I know you can,” Joshua helped me lower the seat while he said supportive things. We stood in the driveway of the beach house my parents rented for the whole clan. Joshua had braved meeting my family for the first time on their turf, and now he was braving my confident belief that I had forgotten how to ride a bike, conventional wisdom be damned.
I hadn’t ridden regularly since age 12, and I hadn’t even tried to ride since the 90s. I was convinced that this idea of never forgetting was a complete load. Brett put me on a mountain bike in the streets of Capitol Hill in 1997, tried to explain toe clips and handbrakes, and down the wide street I wobbled. This was Brett’s kind of bike: built for mud and rocks, not some uncool cruiser or roadie. It was only slightly too big for me, because we’d gotten it from a short guy Brett knew.
OK, you don’t forget how to balance. But starting, stopping, and turning are all skills that must be maintained, or they DO disappear. And toe clips? Hell, how am I supposed to get my feet out of there before the bike falls over? My fantasy images of riding next to Brett were pretty well dead after that. I just wasn’t good enough.
But Joshua had me on this easygoing cruiser. Upright handlebars, pedal backwards to break, just like when I was 12. No gears to puzzle with. He and Ben and I rode the broad bike trails along hill-less streets. I felt the breeze in my face as I picked up speed. It was joy. I did manage to crash into a pole that I was concentrating hard on missing; no major injuries, though. And I was undeterred.
The next morning, in a light drizzle, Ben and I rode to the lighthouse. When the rain got heavy, we ducked into a picnic shelter and he performed his play about our dog stalking the Muffin Man (hilarious) and did interpretive dance on a picnic table while I sang the Jackson 5 (doubly hilarious). “You’re really good on the bicycle, mom,” he said when the rain let up and headed back for the beach house.
Bicycling was the breakthrough event of beach week. While the fantasy I had of Joshua talking and laughing with my family in ways Brett never could still remained a fantasy, I came home ready to ride. Joshua and I spent a beautiful Saturday test-driving bikes at three different shops, and I ended up with my very own, a hybrid with upright-ish handlebars like the last bike I owned in 1982, but with 24 gears and handbrakes.
In the last bike shop, Ben called me in tears. Brett was moving into a new house, and Ben felt lost and wanted to come back home with me. I did my best to get him back on track, offered him help making his room feel like home, told him how his dad wanted to make a nice place for him, and that he should go tell his dad how he felt. He sobbed about Brett not wanting to talk to him because he was too busy with Tiffani. My heart in pieces, I told him his dad wants to talk to him, he should go tell him he needed his attention, and we hung up.
Next call: “Every fucking time you talk to him he’s in tears. He’s fine all day, and then you get him all worked up. Do you even understand how you set him up?”
I sighed. “Brett, he was crying when he called. He’s having trouble adjusting to the move, and he needs you right now. Why are you spending your time yelling at me?” Brett shouted a few more choice things into the phone and I hung up.
Joshua and I went to get dressed for a dinner out. Somehow, even though we are both divorced, we never get to go out on real dates. One of us always has kids in tow, or has to work, or something. But at my house, my phone started ringing again, and it was Ben.
“Daddy says I can come to your house and spend the night if you come get me right now.”
“I’m on my way…” my keys jingled.
So Ben and Joshua and I went on a date. We took our bikes to Joshua’s and headed for Piedmont Park, a few blocks away. Joshua led us the short way, on city streets with bumpy sidewalks. I was SCARED. I didn’t want to ride on streets. I wanted to ride on hill-less, wide bike paths. We shouted over traffic to hear each other, “Can’t we go through the park? PLEASE?”
Joshua re-routed us and we only had to ride a few blocks to take the longer way through the park. I managed to fall twice, and Joshua gently coached me.
“I know what to do, but I think you greatly overestimate my ability to do it,” I joked.
We had Mexican food on the deck at Willies, and rode back to Joshua’s through the park in the dark. I was proud, if sore, because of my new biking skill. And I could tell I would get better.
The next day, after Brett had to pull Ben off my bed kicking and screaming, and after enduring more blame and hatred from him by all forms of electronic media, I rode through Piedmont Park on my own. I was supposed to be on a plane for California, but I couldn’t get on, all puffy and sobbing about Ben and Brett and the whole mess. So Joshua had patiently driven me back to his house from the airport, and I took off biking.
I had never seen the whole park, just the part by the playground with the kids and the part by the bars and hotels with Paul. It was so different than I thought. When you are going bike speed, you get a much better feel for the whole space. There’s a big lake, and a crazy dog park full of weird looking mutts beside well-groomed purebreds. You can smell the chlorine of the swimming pool right by the back of the Botanical Gardens, and you can get from the high rises of downtown to the suburban-feeling midtown in a few hundred turns of the pedals.
Joshua’s the only one who could ever get me back on a bike. And now he’s ready for road riding, but I still feel safest in the park. My friends and family tell me to trust my gut, but my gut is full of fear and shame and hurt. Maybe truth is in there somewhere, but who can tell the difference?
“I want to be with you forever,” he said, during the beach trip.
What’s forever, I wondered, and how do you get there? My last forever lasted 15 years. At least on a bicycle, you get to see where you are right now. And it’s not so far from here to there, even if you do go through the park.
