post-Christmas post

The proud new owner of a mountain bike agreed she should have a helmet before she rode it again.  Accidents make a compelling case.  However, on Christmas Day, nothing was open.

The day after Christmas, no one had bike helmets in inventory.  Except this one guy.  A guy on Craig’s List.  I drove two hours to a small mill house with two impressive Harley motorcycles and a squadron of trail motorbikes parked on the lawn. 

“We bought it for our son,” the guy explains to me while his wife goes to get the helmet.  “But he outgrew it.”  I nod, sons will do that.

I look around me, outside, at kids pedaling their new bicycles, each of them wearing flashy plastic and foam protective gear.

“Here it is.”  His wife hands me what I drove two hours to find.

And this is not it. 

I mean, it’s a helmet.  It would be impossible to mistake it for anything but a helmet.  In fact, it reminds me of the helmet my father brought back from his stint in the army.  No flash.  No rainbows or flying ponies.  Not at all what I know is expected of me to bring back. 

But I did drive two hours. 

And all the stores were out. 

And the anxious new owner of a mountain bike isn’t going to wait forever.

So I pay for the helmet and put it on seat next to the cat.  Toby looks at me like I’m crazy.

“Do you want to be the one who keeps Tabby from riding her new bike?  Yeah.  I didn’t think so.”

When we get back to the house, Tabby and Ally are washing the bike for the third time that day.  “It’s about time,” Tabby says.

“Yeah,” Ally seconds her.  Ally made it clear earlier that she had other things she wanted to do on this rare day off. 

I reach for the helmet and put in the kid’s hands.

Her face lights up like….well, it lights up like yesterday.

“Ohhh, this is sooo coo’ool.”

Toby acknowledges that I have scored big time with the eight-year-old neighbor.  But have I scored with anyone else?

“You’re giving her that?” Ally says with clear disappointment in my judgement.  No score there.

Dan, Tabby’s dad, is leaning at the fence with his wife Alice.  “Let me see, sweetheart.”  His daughter dons the helmet and turns to show him.  “Uh….it’s….uh….well….”

No definitive score there.

Alice has already left the fence and slammed her kitchen door behind her.  That’s probably a no-score.

Ally calls her grandfather and lets him facetime with the new helmet. 

“Awesome!” Telly says.  “You got a bonafide biker’s helmet.  I like the skull and crossbones.”

“I know!” Tabby shouts loud enough to carry up the street without a phone.  The kid runs to get her new doll—the very same she tried to pawn off on her unsuspecting brother yesterday—and puts it in the basket of her bike. 

“Do you know what she calls it?” Ally says of the doll when we get in the car.  “Number Two.”

“The doll?”

“Yep.  Number Two.  Endearing, isn’t it?”

Toby hops in the back seat, and we follow the yellow mountain bike out and up the street.

“You’re letting that little girl wear a biker’s helmet,” Ally says to me. 

“You wanna take it away from her?  Yeah.  I didn’t think so.”  I tell her that if it can protect a kid on a motorbike, it should be able to protect another kid on a mountain bike.  “Look, it will help her carve out her own unique identity on the street.” 

As we watch, the young rider wobbles left and right.

“You know, we didn’t wear helmets when I was a kid,” Telly says from his remote place on the phone. 

“Heads were harder back then,” I tell him.

As we watch, Tabby hits the curb and flies off the bike, putting her biker’s helmet to task at once.  She hits her head hard against the sidewalk.

“Oh my God,” Ally cries. 

I stop the car and run with Ally to the scene of the fall.  Tabby is already on her feet, knocking her helmet like a person wondering who’s home. 

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I’m a nurse,” Ally says.  “Are you okay?”

Like her okay means more than my okay because she’s a nurse.  

Ally puts her hand on the girl’s shoulder. 

“I’m EIGHT YEARS OLD already,” Tabby cries out like someone who has had to explain this to people ever since she was a child.  Ally steps back.  “I GOT THIS.  OKAY?”

Ally steps back further. 

Tabby, meanwhile, gets down on her hands and knees.  I just know she’s going to puke, when, instead, she butts the pavement with her head.  And then she does it again.  Repeatedly.

“Tabby, stop that.  What are you doing?”

“It works,” the kid says.  “The helmet really works.”

“Well, yeah.  But it’s not designed for pretend falls.  So stop doing that.”

We get back in the car.  We watch Tabby put Number Two in the basket and climb back into the saddle.

We follow the mountain bike at about five miles an hour as it hits trashcans and recycling bins on the edge of the road.  Tabby divides leaf piles.  She is indominable.  And then she hits a pothole and bounce right out of her seat and onto her bottom.

“Oh no,” Ally cries.

“Give her moment,” I suggest, in no hurry to incur the kid’s precocious wrath.  “There,” I say with relief.  “She?  She gave us a thumbs-up.”

“That girl’s got real grit,” Telly says, much impressed. 

“Did she really ask for a bike because her parents kept forgetting to pick her up from different places?” Ally asks.  “That is so sad.”

“But much to be admired in a youngster anxious to gain a little independence.”

“Grandfather,” Ally says to the phone.  “She’s eight years old.”

“How old do you think I was when I got my first job?” Telly asks.

“Hold that thought, Telly.  We’ve just had another spill.”

“What’s happening.  I can’t see anything.”

“That’s because you’re not here, Telly.  She’s laying there in the road.”

“Well, are you going to just let her lay there?” Telly asks incredulously.

Ally and I look at each other.  “Maybe just a little longer.”

“There,” Ally cries.  “She’s getting up.  There’s the thumb.”

“Okay, Telly.  We’re rolling again.”

We observe much of the same weaving and wobbling, the same hitting of objects set or parked at the road’s edge.  And then something we didn’t anticipate. 

“On no,” Ally says.  “A hill.” 

It’s not a big hill, as hills go.  But if you’re going down the hill, and you’re not accustomed to using your brakes, the hill can add up.   

“Thank God there is nothing in her way,” Ally says when she can see to the bottom.  But she is forgetting that the new biker doesn’t need something in her way for a reason to fall.

All it takes is little speed and a wobble.  And like that, she is down.

What follows is the hard part.

“Do you think she’s hurt?” Ally asks.

“You’re the nurse.  Maybe you should go check.”

“But do you think she’s really hurt?”  Spoken like a nurse who has learned after one close call.

We sit in the car.  Telly blurts out that he can’t see anything.  I tell him there’s nothing to see.  We’re in a tunnel.

“I think she’s hurt,” Ally says reluctantly.  “It’s been a while.  She’s not getting up.”  Ally rolls down her window and then she turns back to me.  “Do you think she’s hurt.”

While the adults in the car have not yet crossed the threshold between care for another and self-preservation, Toby leaps out the window and runs to Tabby.  The girl sits up and he climbs into her lap.  He lets her hold him while he purrs through the hurt and the tears.  When he has reached is own threshold, Toby steps back and lets the girl get up.  Tabby turns back and gives us a thumbs-up.  She resettles Number Two in the basket and puts one foot on a pedal.  However, before she can cast off again, Toby leaps up into the front basket with Number Two.

“Did you see that?” Ally says, much impressed with the Toby’s courage.

“Remember,” I tell her.  “We only have one life to lose.  He’s got nine.”  

Interestingly, with Toby at the prow, the girl’s undulating course from one side of the road to the other narrows to one bike’s width.  The wobble disappears.  She does sideswipe a kid on another bike, but that looked intentional. 

Our confidence gains a foothold in this initial road-test and Toby takes us back up Myrtle Drive to the road we live on. 

“We’re almost there,” I say excited.   

“Almost,” Ally says.  “But she’s heading right for that red car.”

That red car is Ed Filbert’s Cadillac, which he has chosen to park on the road that runs down the side of his house.  In fact, it was Tabby’s first-day collision with Ed’s parked Cadillac on the road in front of his house that prompted my quest today for the only available protective headwear. 

I regret not getting some protective fingernail-wear for the nail-biter riding shotgun next to me.  I warn Telly to brace himself.

“What!” he demands.  “I can’t see anything.”

WHAM! 

The accident is spectacular, tumbling Tabby, Toby and Number Two over handlebars and basket and—somehow—ejecting Ed out of his holiday slumber and right out of the house.  He is pulling his robe’s drawstring tight when he looks up to see his across-the-street-neighbor headbutting the hood of his pride and joy with her biker’s helmet.  Repeatedly.  We open our car doors.

“Dear God!” Ed cries.

“I know!” Tabby says as she stands up triumphantly on the polished red hood.  “It really works.  I could do this all day.”

“Ed’s clutching his chest,” I narrative for those of us not here to see. 

Telly, Ally and I are asking each other how distressed a contentious guy like Ed really needs to get before he needs help, when we see his shoulders drop and his face grow long. 

“He’s letting go of his chest,” I say.  “He’s padding down to the sidewalk where Toby is holding something in his mouth.  Ed’s leaning over, he’s taking the something out of Toby’s mouth.  Now he’s clutching his back.”

“What did he take out of Toby’s mouth?” Telly asks.

“One guess,” I tell him.

“A mouse?”

“No.  Number Two.”

“I thought I only had one guess.”

“Hush, you two,” Ally demands.

As we watch, the old guy in a robe holding a doll pulls a face mask out of his pocket.    

“I believe this is yours,” Ed says—so completely out of character that I wonder if Toby has steered us into a parallel universe—and offers his hand to help the little lady down from his car.

Toby and Tabby roll.