A Surprising Mother's Day Gift

From Recently Updated

I've received my share of memorable Mother's Day gifts over the years, despite occasional snarky comments about the “Hallmark Card” nature of the holiday. Casts of my children's handprints, hand-made pillows and vases, and the “Mom's Day Off” button that wasn't as effective as it promised, have all brought a smile to my face.

But this year I received an unusual gift, and it came, rather surprisingly, from my husband.

“How would you like to go for a bike ride?” he asked me as I drank my morning coffee. I thought about it and looked outside to see one of those perfect Northern California spring days --sunny but mild.

“Okay,” I agreed. Where shall we go?” He coaxed me to try some hills, telling me that after months of working out at the gym's “virtual reality” bikes, I was in better shape than I imagined.

Feeling both challenged and a bit nervous, I set out with him towards the Santa Cruz Mountains. As we hit the first slopes on the bike path, my husband told me to downshift. Breathing fast I did so and we made it to the end of the path at the underpass of I-280.

Here we turned left and started up the real hills following a series of side streets that eventually would take us to Page Mill Road, the route serious bikers take up to Skyline Ridge or even over the mountains to the Pacific. Now I was on my lowest gear and just focusing on my mantra: “One more foot of asphalt, Just one more foot. Keep pedaling. Keep breathing.”

To give you a sense of why I was so much on my mettle during this ride I have to explain about my long-running love/hate relationship with the bicycle. To me the bicycle represents a perfect balance of yin and yang: the thrill of speed and the peril of losing life and limb.

There are home movies of my Dad returning from his daily bike ride to pick up a newspaper with me tucked on one arm, while he used his other arm to steer.

When I was a little bigger I used to ride on the back of the bike on a seat my father made out of an arm rest. I often rode without shoes until the day I caught my heel in the spokes of the back wheel and gained a scar I carry to this day, and after that, Dad threatened me with a switch if he caught me out biking barefoot.

From My Pictures

At three I rode my tricycle so fast around curves that I frequently tipped over, scraping knees and elbows. At five, free of training wheels, I rode my bike around a bend in the sidewalk, hit a piece of concrete that had been lifted by tree roots and chipped my brand-new front permanent tooth on the handlebars.

By the time I was in my teens, I was riding far afield, still seeking the thrill of speed. There weren't many hills around my house, but I did find one with a decent incline. Unfortunately, the city buses used to run along the road at the bottom, and my brakes were not reliable so there inevitably came that “Oh my God” moment when I sailed in front of a bus driver with inches to spare.

But my real fear on this particular Mother's Day came from the memory of having attempted this same ride years ago on a ten-speed. Then I had downshifted to the lowest gear only to find that I was basically pedaling in place. I finally had to get off and push the bike up the steepest part as other bikers flew past, and the humiliation was too much. I was twenty-something and already too old for biking.

Now, sweating and making my painstaking way up another steep slope I thought that while nearly twenty more years had passed, I was actually making it this time.

We finally reached our intersection with Page Mill Road, and my husband was still urging me onwards. “It's only another half mile to Foothill Park,” he told me. “We're almost to Foothill Park?” I thought to myself incredulously. Now I had to keep going and I did, feeling a huge and surprising sense of accomplishment. I'd not only conquered a hill; I'd conquered about four miles of hill.

The best part, however, was yet to come. “Do you want to go back down Page Mill?” my husband asked me. I readily agreed and shifted to third so I could stay in better control of my speed. I turned my bike around and set off, transported back to my childhood self, the speed demon, heedless of possible scrapes and bruises, with the wind rushing past me and the cars barely passing me, and many glorious miles of descent unimpeded by red lights, stop signs, or city buses.

It's not often you find yourself physically upstaging your twenty-something former self, and I can attest, it feels like you've had a taste of immortality when it happens. So here's to more bike rides and a Mother's Day gift that didn't make me feel like a mom at all but just like being a kid again.