This Week: My Kids Make Me Brave
...in three acts.
Dear fam,
In November of 2013, about a month after my wife and I got City-Hall married, I crashed my bike on the way from class at Berklee to Jamaica Plain. I got crowded off the road by a driver and, when my front wheel hit the curb, I flew headfirst into the concrete.
Even though I was wearing a helmet at the time, I still suffered a concussion and spent the next months lying in a dark room unable to read, write, attend classes, or work my myriad jobs. I also couldn’t plan our actual wedding — which would take place that May — and for a while there it looked like we’d have to postpone it.
My wife and I relied on friends and family to no end during those dark months. Friends who came to spend time with me when I was too dizzy to walk myself to the bathroom. Family who drove me to work (once I could be upright) then waited in the parking lot for me to finish teaching and drove me back home, all so I wouldn’t lose my only source of income.
Somehow, we graduated in the spring of 2014. Somehow, we got married a week after graduation.
I didn’t get on a bike again for ten years. Until last week, when Big Kid showed me I could be brave.
It started, as so many things do, with her being brave. She came home one day and told us she’d decided it was time to start riding a bike with no training wheels. Thus began a relentless (and very short-lived) campaign to getting me or my wife to take the training wheels off her bike. That girl is nothing if not determined.
She spent one (1) evening wobbling around our patio, falling and rising and falling and rising. The next day, we stopped at our neighbors’ house to borrow a bike pump and headed to the blacktop at her school. She proceeded to climb on that bike and take off like a bat outta you-know-where.
Ever since, she’s been biking to and from kindergarten every day.
Soon after Big Kid became a biker, she began to ask me why I wasn’t fixing up the broken bike in our basement. It was a gift from a loved one who wasn’t using it anywhere, given with the caveat that it… needed work. I had vague plans to fix it up, you know — some day. Maybe when riding a bike didn’t make me so nervous.
Big Kid couldn’t grasp why I wouldn’t just take the thing to get fixed. Which is fair enough. A second relentless campaign took shape. Big Kid asked when when when and why why why.
Eventually, I caved: We took it to our neighbors, who are bike mechanics, and Big Kid asked a lot of questions about how the fixing would happen. Then, for the next five days, she asked if we could check on the progress every single time we walked past that house.
Eventually, it was done. Good as new. All that was left to get back on.
“Come on, Mama!” she called to me from the sidewalk, “Let’s go!”
The driveway where we stood slopes slightly, and as I dipped towards Big Kid, my heart leapt into my throat. I swerved, afraid I’d crash at the sidewalk, but she was already on her way. Stopping at the curb to look both ways. Pumping those determined five-year-old legs on the pedals, pushing herself forward.
That afternoon was glorious. We loop-de-looped around the asphalt, whooping at one another. Racing to the fences. Playing follow-the-leader. Wind on our cheeks ‘til they flushed with cold and effort. I’d forgotten how much I love biking. And I can’t believe it took ten years to get that joy back.
Big Kid and Toddler keep showing me what brave looks like, and no wonder. They are fierce little fireballs and they are living life.
Last night, we attended the elementary school talent show at Big Kid’s school. The kindergarteners opened the show with an extremely silly song-and-dance called, inexplicably, Tooty Ta. It was unbelievably cute — a stage full of little cuties following the instructions of the recording (“Thumbs up! Turn around!”) and singing tooty-ta-ta in bright shirts and, for some reason, leis.
We screamed and clapped and gave them a standing ovation of the like Taylor Swift is used to receiving. Of course.
Later that evening, Big Kid told me she’d been a little scared when the curtains opened. “There were literally so many people!” she said, eyes big. But then she just started performing, just as they’d rehearsed, and it turned out to be fun.
I kept returning to this today. She just did it. Pushed past the fear. Didn’t let it stop her. Incredible.
Not a lot of people know this about me (I think?) but one of the big reasons I quit performing music was because of crippling stage fright. I’d get on stage, and my throat would go dry. Close up. My mind? Frozen in terror. If I was sitting on a stool with my guitar, my leg would shake uncontrollably. My hands, too.
I tried to push past it but, eventually, decided to go in a different direction: writing. I can express myself without the terror of singing in front of others.
It’s a puzzle. I do, of course, still sing in front of others. I’m a part time Cantor and, in this role, I often sing in front of hundreds of people. But my throat doesn’t close up when I’m praying — just when I’m singing. Is it because the prayer is, fundamentally, not about me? I don’t know.
I do know that, before every service I lead, I ask G-d to guide me and give me the strength to serve as a connection between the Holy One and the congregation. Perhaps it is this that wards away the fright. This connection to a purpose that’s not about me being seen or perceived; it’s about being a conduit so others might perceive something expansive in themselves and in the world.
Is there anything more vulnerable than performing music in front of others? Probably. For me, though, performing has become associated with a kind of vulnerability I can’t bear. I don’t play charades, I don’t do karaoke, I don’t do anything where anyone is looking at me and having an opinion.
To bear this vulnerability, I would have to be free. Like Big Kid. I would have to take a deep breath and do the thing, even though there are more people in the gym. All of whom might have all kinds of thoughts. I would have to know that those thoughts have nothing to do with me. Unlike Big Kid, I don’t know how to know that yet.
Today, we went back to the blacktop. I didn’t have the grownup bike this time1, so I was hanging out with Toddler. We passed a ball back and forth. We giggled. We ran (a little) and jumped (a lot).
Suddenly, she started a new game. “You a cat, mama!” I meowed. giggle giggle giggle “You a sheep, mama!” I baa-ed. giggle giggle giggle “You a sun!” I held my hands above my head. giggle giggle giggle “You a tree!” I held my hands out like branches, crooking my fingers and making what I hope was a tree-ish face. giggle giggle giggle
We did this for a good 20 minutes, during which I realized I was improvising. Even though everyone and their brother was at the blacktop this morning. Even though crowing like a rooster is a loud thing to do. Toddler believed I would, and so I did.
Later today, at the skate park, when Toddler was dancing to a boombox playing… something loud and bass-ey? I joined in. Briefly, but still — in public. We shook our hips and swirled our hands and bobbed our heads. We didn’t mind the eyes.
I hope I’m never done learning from my kids. I hope they’re never done learning from me. I hope they keep showing me how to be brave, how to dare. I hope we hold one another when we fall and we learn, together, how to be vulnerable.
Lord, I love being a part of this family.
Sending you love and strength and a prayer for finding courage this week.
Shavua tov,
Mikhal
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Three songs to feel good to:
It belongs both to me and my wife, so it’s a grownup bike — belongs to the adults.