Riley sees little point in those balance bikes for children. Have you seen them? The ones without pedals? We borrowed one from the toy library this week so he could try it, but the borrowing was done with less than a want on his part, and more by coercion on ours. I daresay I was interested in the novelty factor – we didn’t have these sorts of bikes when we were kids! Or if we did, it was because they were broken and not supposed to look like that. I’ve just tried to demonstrate how it works to him outside: You just scoot along with your feet, I said, holding him upright. It’s too wobbly, he complained. He played with it for a few minutes before giving up. Then he went inside and demanded food. It was snack-time, apparently.
I have a number of things I ought to be working on at this moment: a guest post, two poems-in-progress, my own blog posts, and a couple of other things I’m sure that have slipped my mind. All this while keeping a half-eye and ear on what my son is getting up to. Do I sound conflicted?
Bet your sweet cheeks I am.
The other evening at the blogging workshop, we didn’t have enough time to do the following writing exercise: I was going to ask the students to describe ten seconds in one hundred words. This was because one of my favourite blog posts ever was 71 words*:
Three teenagers slouch together at a railway station. Two girls and one boy, they laugh harshly and fiddle with their mobile phones while they wait for the train. A girl and the guy suddenly peel off and start kissing and hugging. The other girl turns her head away from the spectacle; a practised wallflower.
Discreet.
Still, she clenches her left hand and the coke can she holds concaves, ever so slightly…
While I freely admit the writing is not perfect (it has two ‘ing’ verbs next to each other for starters!) it does come close to describing the purity of a brief moment I witnessed in 2007, on the day of my MRI, that would have occurred over ten seconds, at most. I was going to ask the students if they agreed with me: were these purities of time and experience naturally suited to blogging? Further, if by writing them down, you inhabit a moment wholly, and then when you share it you pass on a humane commonality that I always treasure. You feel. You wonder. You speculate. You create. All while distancing yourself from a personal issue that may be troubling you, causing artistic seizure. In my case, that moment stopped me (briefly) from worrying if they were going to find a brain tumour. The chances were slim, but they were there.
So maybe I will try the balance bike out on Riley again. Or maybe not. He has his other one after all, red and black, with pedals and training wheels, and however he learns it will be fine and it will be good. Riding a bike; learning to write; learning to blog. They are all quite similar. At least they are to me.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better go see what he’s up too…
