The Bike Accident

A most terrible, inevitable motherhood mistake happened last night. Knock wood, say a prayer, cross your fingers, spit three times because we are all fine and mostly laughing a day later. But this the story of how I tipped the kids on our electric bike.

We were riding home from the park yesterday evening and I pulled over on a side street to wait for Scott and Costa to catch up on their far inferior non-electric bike. When I tried to turn back onto the main road (a sleepy one way street) I was on an incline and the bike began to tilt over. I couldn’t right it and in an instant we were all kissing concrete. Everyone was fine. Avalon ran to the sidewalk like a well trained child who fears the street, Isla was still buckled in her baby seat and crying, but utterly unharmed. I scooped her up and ditched the bike in the street. People came to make sure we were ok. Scott lifted the bike one handed like one of those moms lifting a car off her offspring and then we dusted our knees off and finished riding home.

The kids ate tortellini and went to bed, while I wandered around haunting our hallways and trying to resurface from the depths of insurmountable remorse.

I texted my friends like my phone was a confessional and they were high priestesses. FORGIVE ME, MOTHERS, I HAVE SINNED. Tell me again how your kid fell from his skateboard, the tree, how you forgot to pick your daughter up that minimum day. They did, of course, and I cried and felt slightly buoyant again. Like, maybe I’ll make it through the night without convicting myself “unfit to mother”. And of course, I did. Especially when I remembered that time my sister fell off the back of our golf cart.

We all live in *this* world. We’re all going to suffer. Life takes you down sometimes. And that’s ok. Maybe that’s its intended effect. And, excuse the obvious ending here, but we get back up and keep riding.

(but also I want a trike 😅)