Thanks To My Dad

When your father believes in you, you can do anything. For Cathy Garrard, that included riding a two-wheeler, moving across the country, and, eventually, coping with the loss of the very person who made it all possible.

- Cathy Garrard

ONE SUMMER OF MY early childhood, my father taught me how to ride a bike. Behind the banana seat of my tiny turquoise bicycle, my father installed squeaky metal training wheels to help me gain balance and confidence. I relied on them heavily in the era of no helmets, wobbling back and forth as the wheels screeched on the pavement.

After days of my riding in loops around our Midwestern cul-de-sac, my father called out to me from the front porch, a can of beer in his hand, and enthusiastically suggested that it was time he take the training wheels off. “You’re ready, Cath!” he encouraged, smiling. Dad, a natural athlete and Eagle Scout, did most everything with casual ease. He won pretty much every competition he ever entered, and he had the best Zippo lighter tricks on the block. But I gripped the handlebars more tightly, shook my pigtailed head, and insisted that I wasn’t ready. He didn’t push.

Time has dimmed the memory of whether it was my mother or my older sister who soon told me that my training wheels were tipped upward—by my father’s hand?—and hadn’t been touching the ground for quite some time. I ran to Dad, who, chuckling, admitted that it was true (though never that he had been the one who’d tinkered with them). Then he deftly removed them and ran by my side for my first official two-wheel spin. He cheered me on when I glided down the street and didn’t topple over. I was exhilarated, and I felt invincible. He knew I was ready, even when I did not.