The Bike

The day it happened I was riding my bike down the trails in the fields behind my house.

My dad had bought the bike second hand and refurbished it for my birthday. He’d given it to me the day before, a giant purple bow stuck to the seat. My mother had said it was too late to go out cycling by the time the birthday party ended, so the next morning, as soon as it was light, I dashed out the door ignoring all her protests about breakfast.

The bike was perfect. It was a blaring, bright blue with yellow trim and a little white basket.

Or maybe it was silver. Maybe it had a green basket.

You’d think I’d remember a thing like that, but I don’t.

I even have old photos of me from around the same time, curling at the edges – two that have me, head thrown back laughing, astride a yellow and blue bike, and three of me pushing a silver bike by the handlebars in a muddy purple dress, my gaze falling on someone or something out of shot. None of them are birthday related.

Blue or silver? It bothers me that I don’t know.

Bothers me that no one is around to ask anymore.

My dad never had much money and I know now it was a struggle for him to even buy the bike used. I've imagined him since, working diligently, a little smile curving the corner of his mouth as he thought about the surprise. How he must have painted it so carefully in those crisp, clean colours, so carefully it became indistinguishable from the shiny new ones in the racks outside the cycle shop. All that, for me. And I loved it before I even saw it, my excitement brimming over at just the sight of the sheet thrown over the vague bicycle shape in the back yard.

Yet, the colour is gone as if it were never there.

Sometimes as I’m on the edge of sleep, I see myself speeding around those dirt tracks on that very first day on the bike. Giggling with the neighbour kid as we pedalled ferociously trying to outrace each other.

Free and unburdened, at least for a few more minutes.

And it was silver, I know it.

Or maybe it was blue and yellow.

I remember how my mother shouted (or did she scream?) from the back door, that day after my birthday, her voice suffused with a depth of raw emotion I’d never heard before.

The way it carried across the fields.

Just hearing her call my name, I knew things I couldn't possibly know.

And I sped towards her on my blue bike.