Stop crying and have fun!
My daughter is riding a road bike for the first time, sporting the same spandex jersey as her proud father, who’s riding several feet behind her.
She’s nervous — the bike is very different from the one she’s used to — and there’s a little bit of traffic on the road. Still, we’re in the bike lane and she’s doing great.
But she doesn’t see the rock. We’ll soon discover it’s actually a baseball-sized piece of asphalt from a partially-finished side street which has made its way smack-dab into the middle of the cyclist-only part of the roadway. My daughter hits it dead-on, her wheel bouncing up and sideways, sending her tumbling face-first to the ground.
This is just the latest in series of unmitigated disasters which have accompanied my relentless efforts to get my kids to enjoy the things that I love. Part of my motivation is to expose them to activities I think they’d like but it’s also rooted in a certain selfishness: I want to do things with my children that I find fun.
When she was five, my oldest daughter tried hockey. I was playing on a regular basis and watching on TV — and she and I had been skating a few times. We bought some gear, paid the exorbitant registration fee and she hit the ice. Literally. She fell down five times in the first two minutes, crawled off the ice in tears and refused to go back. Ever.
She was also the first victim of my attempts to turn my kids into cyclists. We went trail riding, where she promptly crashed hard and begged to go home, then tried the road version a few years later. We went too far, she got dehydrated and finished the ride in tears. Now 16, she says bike helmets mess up her hair and she much prefers driving my car.
While I’m not crazy about the car thing, I have tried to embrace the things my children have shown an interest in. I’ve been to my fair share of dance recitals. I’ve oohed and aahed over various art-class projects. My oldest kid found basketball all on her own we spent the winter driving to various tournaments.
But these are not, generally speaking, things we can do together. My father and I play golf on a regular basis and some of our best memories come from the links: the beautiful places we’ve played, the miraculous shots we’ve hit. When he beat cancer a few years ago, one of his primary motivations was getting back out on the course.
I found a used set of junior golf clubs for sale the other day and my youngest daughter has expressed a willingness to try the driving range. I will do my best to temper my enthusiasm for fear that I will, once again, ruin things. We’ll take it slow and have some fun, however long it lasts.
And I’ll keep an eye out for rocks.