how anders falling off his bike is a lot like grief

{flywheel week 2 assignment:: analogy}

something happened in the sporting goods store that day.  hazel's bike had gotten too small and anders was now big enough to have his own bike.  he had rode hazel's over and over and over in circles in our driveway at home.  more than her, really.  training wheels, clicking against the old cracks in the cement, it wasn't difficult and it wasn't anything he had even thought twice about.  so we were at that superstore to try out simple bikes for the kids that didn't break the bank.  i pictured in my head just plain jane blue and yellow bikes, but nooooo that's too simple for american culture so our only options are bikes with all kinds of things on them.  cars on bikes, cupcakes on bikes, motorcycles on bikes.  is just a bike too much to ask for?  anders climbs on one of the bikes with cars on it and it's too big.  just too much for him to handle and i know it but don't think it'll do any harm to let him try.  he falls immediately and i didn't know it at the time but something happened in that sweet little mind of his.  he was done.  bikes meant falling and so he'd skip the bike thing.  we bought one that was the right size.  no problem, right? wrong.
he would not ride it.  it took me a long while to connect his refusal to the falling in the store.  a week of hazel and cousins and other kids riding circles around him and he stays on that tricycle.  the safe one, close to the ground, going snails pace even though his knees cramped up at his chest circle fast and furious.  another week of trike-riding goes by. still, no bike.  then one day i look out and my mom is talking with him beside the cars bike.  he climbs on.  he rides.  he rides and rides and rides.  and eventually, he falls again.  but this time he knows that it's possible to keep riding even after one has had a crash.  he fights tears and wins.  then grabs handlebars, swings the leg over and keeps going.  he doesn't ride because he won't fall.  he rides knowing he will and that he can keep going.

i said i would never be away again over eliot's birthday.  a few years ago, we were in michigan with family and there was nothing wrong with it.  it wasn't bad.  it was just that we weren't in fayetteville. the town where he took that first breath and where he took that last.  and we weren't just us in our own home where we could shut the door, pull the blinds, look at pictures, videos, remember, cry, smile, celebrate the sacredness of that day he was born.
when we began looking at what it would be like to travel up north again last summer, a look at the schedule and my heart sank a bit.  i can't have it all.  i made cupcakes by the bay and it was beautiful but it was surrounded by others instead of in the silence and weight of a july 20 at home. and the next day, surprisingly, the sun rose again in the east. and i breathed in and out and fed the kids breakfast and the world kept spinning round.  it was what would have been his 7th birthday and i was still surprised that the sun rose the day after.  seven whole years and i didn't wanna get back on the bike.  grief feels a lot like falling off the bike, but it's not falling off the bike at all.  it is the getting on and knowing you will fall and you can still keep going. whether my heart is feeling sustained or whether the pieces wrecked by missing him seem to obscure and messy for even Him to pull together... the journey keeps going.
knowing i'll fall, i keep riding.