One of my favorite things to do is to read. I guess it started when I memorized my first book while sitting perched on a kitchen table in Humboldt Park. Someone, I am assuming it was my mother's sister, read the same book to me so often I was able to repeat it back word for word corresponding perfectly with the pictures on the pages. In my mind, I was reading and not just memorizing. Eventually I learned how to actually read, and had to move off the kitchen table and sit in a chair. I have always found great comfort in words whether they are written in the form of a novel, a short story, a poem, an essay, or the lyrics to songs. I think of words as keys and I use them to unlock my thoughts, and feelings so I can make sense of the world and my place in it.
When I had my own children and re-entered the world of children's books it did not take long to see what first drew me to my love for words. For a long time my favorite book was The Great Gatsby, then it was Great Expectations and then the Prince of Tides. When my son was born my favorite book became Oh the Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss. Then when my son turned 3 my best friend gave him the book, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and I had a new idol. Move over Fitzgerald, Dickens and Conroy, Mr. Silverstein has just waltzed into the room and into my heart. His poem Where the Sidewalk Ends spins the idea of childhood dreams into a tapestry of a never ending chalk filled paradise. So, it was the idea of Sidewalks that made me go back and re-read the poem.
I have started riding my bicycle again, another passion that usually starts in childhood. Some passions have to wait until we are old enough or coordinated enough or strong enough, but not reading or bike riding. Those are love affairs that can begin with one word picture books and tricycles. Yet, while I never stopped reading, I did stop riding after I moved from the city to the suburbs 12 years ago. Growing up I needed my bicycle for so many reasons, the most important being as a mode of transportation since I grew up in a family that did not have a car. But in the Big City you don't need 4 wheels to get around. Two will do. So I rode and rode and rode. Then I realized all that riding was also a great way to lose the extra weight I tended to gain every 2-3 years. And even better, riding my bike along the Chicago lake front from Hollywood to Oak Street Beach was a great way to meditate and day dream about books I might write one day.
When I moved out to Buffalo Grove with my one year old son I put my bike in the garage and forgot about it. Growing up in the suburbs has made it easy to live a life without bicycles. My kids need to be driven everywhere. Some suburbs have no sidewalks at all. Even more dangerous are all the main avenues with 4 to 6 lanes of traffic. I realize there are bike trails but you have to drive to a lot of them just in order to start which means hooking the bike up to a carrier on the car and THEN going somewhere suitable for a bike ride. It just takes all the romance out of it for me. So I started riding around my neighborhood out here in Suburbville USA.
I am here to say, it is not true that you never forget how to ride a bike. I have fallen numerous times. I seem to have loss my sense of balance and/or confidence. I am quite nervous as I maneuver through streets to get to the one accessible bike path in my neighborhood. Suddenly everything seems so narrow. I am only about 20 pounds more than I use to be yet I feel like sidewalks and the bike paths are made for well coordinated stick figures. I have developed a horrible fear that I will run into another bike rider when I see one heading towards me. Then it dawns on me. I am not that much larger and uncoordinated than I was 20 years ago. I am not the problem.
Our culture has alloted space for the things it worships, cars, big cars. If we had been truly intelligent during all this urban/suburban planning we would have made much wider sidewalks and big fat bicyle trails running along every street and highway. Just think of how skinny we would all be from the walking and riding. Obesity epidemic? There would not be one. We could even break out the old grocery carts we all pulled along Devon Avenue when I was growing up. I wonder how that might help with firming up my flabby arms? And think of the stories a kid with a box of chalk could come up with along Sidewalks that never END?? Oh Shel, I miss you.
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