Bikemum

A normal Saturday morning. Oakley is three, Thistle is six, Jonah eight and Finn ten. The family is all hanging around the house doing a whole lot of nothing. It is very peaceful. Too peaceful.I wander through the house “Oakley?” I call. No response. I go into the backyard where Twain is working. “Have you seen Oakley?” I ask. “Nope.” He sighs heavily and immediately stops what he is doing to join me in a preliminary search of the house. We look under beds, in the bathroom, in closets and in the yard. No Oakley. “Oakley Alert!” I call. The kids groan, but don’t hesitate. Everyone begins looking.

The thing with Oakley is that he hides. Calling his name doesn’t do it. You have to find him. Oakley disappearing has happened so frequently that we have taken drastic measures. Our doors all have hook-and-eye locks about 6 feet high, out of his reach, that we are committed to locking whenever we are home. The doors also have springs on them that snap them shut when you open them in case you forget to close them securely. Our backyard is enclosed by a 3-foot chain link fence with a sprin-loaded gate. When this didn’t prove enough to hold him in, we added a two-foot extension of bird netting that seems unclimbable above the fence. In the past he has managed to scale the outdoor shower that is attached to the house, cross over the roof and jump into the front yard in an effort to attain freedom.

The house is empty, the search needs to expand. Thistle stays at home stationed by the telephone in case he reappears. Finn strikes out on his bike, to tour the neighborhood. Jonah grabs one Razor scooter and I grab the other. Twain sets out on foot. The neighborhood fills with the sound of our calling. “Oakley! Oakley!” Some neighbors hear us and venture out. “You lost him again?” Asks one gentleman with a kind smile. He shakes his head and begins searching his yard. Another neighbor calls out “He is not in here!” Our search continues. We fan out over several blocks; no Oakley. It has now been 25 minutes and I am beginning to move past numbness into slight worry. I pass Twain on my scooter. “Maybe we should call the police?” “Yeah maybe, let’s give it a few more minutes.”

Calling the police is scary. I have contacted them in the past to try to give them a heads up about our little runaway. I told them all the precautions we have taken and asked them to just be aware that if they ever come upon a toe-headed three-year-old wandering alone in a place where one wouldn’t normally find one to give us a call. The response was harsh. Yes, they would keep an eye out, and if they found him they would call Child Protective Services.

Just then, Twain’s cell phone rings. It is six-year-old Thistle. “He is at Krispy Kreme.” She proudly reports. “They just called.” Wow. Krispy Kreme is three blocks away and along the busy Savannah Highway, a 4-lane commercial strip that is the main artery leading to and from Charleston, South Carolina. He must have cut through backyards and hedges the whole way or we would have seen him. I tear off on my scooter.

When I arrive, Oakley is sitting in a chair happily eating a donut and drinking from a carton of milk. He is wearing both a medical ID bracelet that we had purchased for him, with his name and phone number on it. (Think Paddington Bear “If lost” tag.) And a bright blue harness equipped with a beeper that goes off if a remote is pushed. It only has a 150-foot range, so it didn’t work very well. The manager of Krispy Kreme is incredulous. He feels like a hero. He is. I thank him sincerely for his rescue although I can’t help wishing he hadn’t fed Oakley. I am sure that Oakley will continue to frequent this place. I throw Oakley on the front of my scooter and ride home. He is terribly pleased with himself.

The family has all regathered at home and are waiting to hear about Oakley’s adventure. I tell them about his tasty little snack and they all can’t help but praise him. “Oakley got a donut!” They all shout with glee. They pat him on the back, ask if it was yummy and wish they could pull off such a stunt. We all live a bit vicariously through him. Then it is over. Wordlessly we all return to whatever it was that we were working on. This wasn’t rehearsed. We all know the drill. Saturday continues.

Sometimes when my husband and I crawl into bed at night we laugh and take turns recounting Oakley stories. We wince slightly at some of the gory details, but overall we feel lucky to have a child as entertaining as our son. Those are the good nights.

The Maps came today! There are 144 postcard sized maps meant to be affixed to the handlebars of your bike. They filled Oakley and me with simultaneous joy and dread. 144 maps? That’s a lot. 

One of my many bad habits seems to be getting my family lost. I have a reputation for being “sure” I know where we are going. It is always just a little bit further or just around the bend. I make promises and swear on my life that I know where we are going. Many times I am right, but the truth is, I should be dead many times over.

These days, when we set off on expeditions into the wilderness everybody in my family grabs the maps from my hands and makes sure they know the way independently. I find this very annoying. Where is the adventure in that? I like heading off into the wilds with a general sense of where we are going but nothing too specific. I like winging it. Nobody else seems to appreciate this quality in me.

In 2007 I took my family back to Prescott, Arizona, to visit my college town and show them the sites. Finn was 12, Jonah 10, Raven 6 and Oakley 4. I was excited to lead them up Granite Mountain and show them the beautiful gnarled trees on the top and the fields of grasses that I recalled had herds of javelinas running through. I assured them we didn’t need to take the well-worn path to the top–boring!–but rather we could quickly ascend by boulder-hopping up a rock gully that went up the backside of the mountain. I had done it thousands of times while I was in school and it was so much shorter and so much more fun than the path. 

For some inexplicable reason, my family let their guard down, and they blindly began the ascent. The travel was gentle enough at first and we all enjoyed the scramble for the first 20 minutes. It wasn’t long before the hay-bale sized boulders became refrigerator-sized and the chasms between them became deep. Twain and I began taking turns hopping from one to the other and tossing the smaller of the children across. Twain soon became wary.  “Are you sure about this?” he questioned. “Yes,” I curtly replied as I caught Oakley in my arms after another toss. “We are almost there.” We continued on.  

An hour later the boulders had become dumpster-sized and the space between them had grown to 6 to 10 feet in places. We had passed the point where descending was a safe option. Twain became silent. The kids became anxious. “Shouldn’t we be there by now?” asked Finn. “I don’t feel comfortable,” proclaimed Raven. A telltale warmth began to creep up the back of my neck as I realized that perhaps I had made a mistake.  It had been 14 years since I’d been here. Memory fades.

One hour turned into five. We finished our water and had no more snacks. We were in the high desert of Arizona in April, and the sun was beginning to set. The evening air began to blow cold and I realized with horror, that we might be stuck here, halfway up the mountain, if we didn’t find a path off before dark. It would be too cold. Last night had been well below freezing and we had shivered in our sleeping bags at the base of the mountain. Today we were only wearing shorts and t-shirts.

Reluctantly, I admitted to Twain that I must have remembered wrong. I was scared. He was scared. We would fight about it later, but now we needed an emergency plan. He had a lighter and we planned to put the kids up against a big boulder and make a fire against it. The fire may provide enough warmth and it it might also make a big enough light that someone might see us. 

One last problem. I hesitate to mention this, but I had known full well that the top of the mountain was closed because of nesting peregrines. Plus, the forest was exceedingly dry. If someone saw our fire, I knew that they would come to rescue us because we were breaking the law. I had studied environmental science and wilderness leadership at Prescott College in this very town and now I was looking at an emergency rescue of my children, an arrest for trespassing and breaking an environmental ban, and I could very well burn the whole mountain down while I was at it. 

As the last rays of sun disappeared from the sky, we found the top, and the well-worn path down. We were hungry, thirsty and freezing and been hiking for 10 hours instead of my projected 2, but we would live to our next adventure. 

What an exciting tale right? No damage done, just some endorphins fired and an adventure completed. My family doesn’t feel the same way. They now refer to Granite Mountain as “Mount Doom” and use it as evidence that I can’t be trusted with maps or directions.

So, maps. Not my forte. Now I have 144 of them.

I am not a very mushy person. It is hard for me to express my appreciation and affection for others verbally. It makes me feel squirrely and insecure, like if I tell someone how I really feel they may run for the hills. However, I can’t let my husband Twain’s song go unsung.

I am crazy lucky. I have been married 23 years and to still feel incredibly happy to be sharing my life and family with Twain. He has always encouraged me to follow my dreams even when it has cost him dearly. I wanted kids. I wanted to move to Maine.  I wanted to travel. I wanted to return to school to get my Masters degree. I wanted a dog, He always simply says, “If you can make it work, you should do it.” Okay, maybe he didn’t say that about the dog,  maybe I fought for that, but…

So, this bike trip. He has been encouraging me for years. I have been fantasizing about it forever, but reality kept pulling me home. What about the money? What about us? What about his dreams? Shouldn’t I be pulling my fair share? But, he has never wavered. He has consistently told me that we will find a way , even when all signs pointed to the countrary.

He believes that this ride could be a game changer for Oakley. All of Oakley’s energy could be harnessed and used to build his confidence and appreciation of the world instead of it being viewed as too much and something for which he is constantly being scolded for.  Twain wants Oakley and me to be happy and to experience life to it’s fullest.

Our family will be stressed because of this trip. Twain may have to turn our home into a bed and breakfast while we are away to help cover costs. We may have to take out a loan. He will have to take care of our dog (the one that I had to fight for), and he will continue to go to work every day. even though he also loves adventure. But, he says “Go,” “I will be here.”

Either he is an incredibly generous person or….he he has a shady ulterior motive. I chose to believe the first. I love him. That’s it. I wish we could all be so generous to each other. 

12 years ago. Story time at the public library. Ten little three-year-olds sit on their bottoms watching the librarian perform a lively and entertaining puppet show. The children’s mothers lounge on the floor by their children, laughing along with them and delighting in the enraptured look on the young faces. Except for one mother. Me. I try to look relaxed and engaged, but the truth is my internal pressure gauge is rapidly rising. Oakley is not sitting with me. He has wiggled out of my grasp and is now in the front of the room trying to converse with the puppets in the show. He keeps leaning his head into the puppet theater to see where they go when they are not on the stage. He is speaking loudly, asking the people in the audience where they are hiding and is pushing against the flimsy puppet stage in an uncoordinated manner. “Oakley, come sit down,” I say as gently as possible As if. I know too well where this is heading. He shoots me a look, full of impish daring. I eye the nearest exit. It seems miles across the library. “Oakley, come here.”

I start to crawl up to where he stands in front of the crowd. My cheeks redden and I feel unaccountably hot. Why did I ever try to bring him here? Something about the fluorescent lights, the quiet tones and the cavernous space always makes Oakley become unglued. I must have had a lapse in judgment when I thought it would be fun. Oakley looks at me again, grins and snatches a puppet right off the librarian’s hand. “No Oakley!” I half-shout and half groan. I reach for him, but it is too late; he is off. All the mothers smile sympathetically at me, and the librarian pops her head up. “Uh-oh,” she says.

Uh-oh nothing…this is just the beginning. I stand up and walk swiftly after Oakley. I do not dare run in the library. “Oakley,” I call in my best public, I-can-handle-this voice; “This is not funny; come back.” He darts between two shelves of books and sprints with the puppet in his hand to the farthest recesses of the library; I am in hot pursuit. He weaves from one aisle to the next and squeals with delight as I gain on him. “Oakley,” I hiss when I think no one can hear, “Stop.” He is little, but nimble and without sprinting there is no way I can get him. He seems to know that I don’t want an embarrassing scene and uses it to his advantage. He zooms out to the study corral area and shrieks with unbridled joy. He is obviously enjoying the sound of his own voice bouncing off the high ceilings in this quiet atmosphere. People all around the library are now watching, many look annoyed, a few curious about who will win our little game tag and one or two look genuinely sympathetic. The puppet show lady is now standing up staring at our spectacle and all the children who were watching her show are now watching our show. As he flies by the check-out area another librarian calls out “He can’t do that in here!”

No shit Sherlock, I think, but I just smile at her and weakly reply that I know. He spins down a reference aisle and I start to lose it. I am now openly running, realizing that it is the only way. Again I hiss “ Stop or I will pull your ear!” Somehow that sounds more dignified than shouting that I will spank him. I close the gap between us, then lunge. I grab the back of his shirt and pull him to me. His squeals of delight turn to screams of outrage. “Let me go, let me go!” He thrashes and writhes and I can barely hold him.
Tucking his 40 pound body under my arm in a football hold I try to walk back to the children’s section to return the puppet. It is no easy task. Sweat covers my body. He is putting up an intense fight to match his intense fury. I return the puppet and beg forgiveness. The mothers are no longer smiling, many are averting their eyes. I realize that I can not leave the library carrying him and our assorted bags while he is tantruming and we have to get out of here. So, praying no one in this library knows me, I take his jacket and tie it around his arms and torso like a straight jacket. I tie it in the back. Grasp the knot tightly in one hand, hold our things in the other and drag him against his will out of the library, like a trussed turkey. Everyone watching us. Finally, we make our way out the doors and on to the side walk. Exhausted and in desperate need of a regroup, I sit both of us down on the curb. I look at Oakley, The fresh air has stilled him. He is not screaming anymore, he has moved on and is blissfully watching the cars pass by. “Oakley, you can’t do that, it makes mama so sad.”
“You proud of me?’ Asks Oakley.

“No Oakley, I am angry that you ran away and screamed in the library.”
“Don’t be angry, be proud!” Oakley grins wildly and his eyes shine. It is obvious that he doesn’t get it. He thinks that we just played a romping game of chase. He was only angry because he lost. Now he sparkles.
“Ugh” I groan. How can I love this little nut so much? Another trip to the library, another year off my life.

This story sums up Oakley’s and my life together. He has brought me to my knees countless times and filled my heart to the brim with pride. He has an incredible love of life and readiness to take on the world. Now at 15 he bikes on 6 foot tall unicycles, does back flips, juggles and still laughs with a maniacal glee. He is still the same nut he was at three, and he still doesn’t do well keeping his bum on the floor. That is who I am biking with.

There has been an early snow and a drastic drop in temperature here on Peaks Island. Peaks is a bucolic island, two miles off the coast of Portland, Maine. It is populated by 1,000 hardy souls three seasons of the year, and balloons up to 4,000 in the summer. It is an ideal place to raise a family. A ferry runs hourly back and forth to the city and it provides the best of urban and rural living. Our family works and goes to school in the city and then we come home to a yard full of beehives, gardens and fruit trees with beaches and forests just a block or two away. Most everybody on the island knows each other and for the most part, get along. Not many secrets, tons of gossip and a cozy small-town feel. How can I complain?

Well, one can feel a bit stuck here. There is a four-mile shore road that circumnavigates the island and I walk or run it just about every day. It is beautiful, but after the 10th time in a week, it can begin to feel like a running on a hamster wheel. Going to town as an alternative can sometimes feel like an insurmountable effort. We ride the ferry six or seven times a week and everything in Portland costs money. To entertain myself at home, I have baked, played the piano, eaten and drank to a gluttonous level with my family (it was Thanksgiving break), exercised and read. 

Yet, here it is, November 25th, and already, I feel a bit of small house madness. No surprise right? Oakley is bouncing off the walls, finding no purchase for his boundless energy. The trampoline is covered with snow, the unicycles have been put in the basement and there is a moratorium on screen time in our house. This leaves him at a loss. He runs up and down the stairs like a galloping colt in a too small pen. He begs for snacks, begs for screen time, begs for snacks etc. We make him go outside. He runs around finding friends than they all come back here and continue the running and begging routine. Last night I dreamt I looked up at the living room ceiling and found it pockmarked with chunks of broken plaster and lathe. I asked my husband what happened and he said “It is from Oakley’s stomping.” This bike trip can’t happen soon enough. If it doesn’t the walls of our house will collapse and Oakley and I might combust.

My name is Oakley Bradenday. When my mother first began talking about this bike trip I was not excited. I thought it was a terrible idea. In fact, I hate biking and every time I have gone biking with my mom, I have tried to make it a living hell for her and anyone else that was with us. But, she has been talking about it so much that I am getting used to the idea. I know there will be times on the trip that I hate it and might hate her too. I am willing to go but, don’t forget, I still hate biking.