Learning to Ride a Bike

My mom was sitting on the porch steps watching. Her knee had swelled up so she was unable to assist. My older brother was on the grass nearby playing with the neighbor. I had a little blue footstool because I was just a little bit too short to mount the bike by myself. I remember getting on and tipping over several times but always getting back on the blue stepping stool to try again. I will never forget that feeling of balance I had when I was finally able to coast down the sidewalk past my brother and how proud I felt. Since then I've thought of other skills I'd like to learn and desired to learn them 'as easily as I learned things as a kid' but I think the reality is that things weren't easier  as a kid, I just stuck to them more because they seemed more important. In fact everything seemed mortally important at the time. And now, there are things I want to learn to do, but a lot of them just don't seem important enough for me to put in that level of commitment and practice.