Kicking Back at Fate
by Jacquie Phelan

Figuring out how to ride a bicycle was the first miracle I ever experienced. That old bike would flavor everything in my life from that moment on.

I was nine years old, the last one on my block to learn. I was impeded by the fact that the bike at my disposal was my mom's grown-up bike, and I could barely reach the pedals. A few bruise-filled afternoons on that huge black Raleigh, followed by a magical session on a little kid's bike borrowed from the sympathetic folks next door, turned me into a rider. The seconds I stayed upright began outlasting the moments I spent extricating myself from the fallen bike, and soon I was stringing entire moments together, the picture of triumph on two lightly wobbly wheels. Rides around the neighborhood felt like globe-trotting adventures, and I bragged to my mom that I had indeed been around the world one perfect spring day. In a rare moment of parental indulgence, she believed me.

Small wonder that I re-enact that miracle every time I throw a leg over the saddle. It still astonishes me that a person poised over two tiny little moving points in a line, in a plane, can achieve upright equilibrium by adding speed. I'm especially astonished that the equation works when I'm fighting with a hard-to-zip windbreaker. I sometimes wonder if the laws of physics will be repealed when I am in the middle of a winding, slick descent. The devilish programmer in my upstairs viewing room runs a segment of 'Flights of the Paranoid' until I remember I'm the one with the clicker, and I switch channels to 'Replays of Great Races', 'Peaceful Ponds' or my favorite: 'Wombats: Bulldozers of the Bush'. My elbows unlock and my neck loosens.

No matter what else is going wrong, when I'm in the saddle, one thing in my life is in balance.

I was nowhere near my bike, just having breakfast, when I got the news that a child I knew was killed on a narrow country highway. Strapped into her school van, hit head-on by a logging truck that was swerving to avoid someone else in a third car.

Even sitting down on the sofa, I could feel the road ahead taking a nasty, off-camber downhill turn.

She was nine. I guess she'll stay nine forever.

She was an inspiring little biker who reminded me of that miracle worker inside me. She showed me how it's possible, when climbing a hill on a singlespeed bike, to get to the top by dropping the bike from side to side, stomping straight down on each pedal as it slowly comes around. With every ounce of her 50 pounds, she bore down -- a useful trick any time the world looms up to slow your progress. I also remember how the pedals ran away from her on the other side of the hill, and her foot slipped off and she slammed her shin. After a good cry (while still pedaling) she was fine. I didn't get the feeling it was going to ruin her afternoon.

This morning's sad news feels as though it will ruin my month, and my heart goes out to her parents, her brothers, her classmates. Fate creates shear forces which deform along emotional planes. Families and communities buckle, or become pushed together. The closer you are to the loss, the greater the deformation you experience. The people along the edge of the shear survive. But how do they go on? They just do. Time's sands can scour and soften the edge, but it is never erased. There is serious damage to a certain month, or a certain season. You can brace for it annually, until it becomes bearable, then you just ride it out like a veteran.

Fortunately, the bike is an ideal tool to transform sorrow into forward movement, if only a few feet of it at a time. There is a kind of emotional flywheel effect where you can actually feel the bike send stored-up joy back up from the pedals, through the feet, legs, and ultimately straight into your broken heart. If you're not completely distracted by the big ding in your stability -- or illusion of stability -- the bike can return you to the moment, and spirit you out of the past. Its momentum carries you through.

If you are too distraught, though, you're better off not riding for awhile, lest you yourself become a statistic. When Fate senses you aren't looking, she has a way of drawing back her leg to deliver a harsh kick.

And you can't figure Fate, no matter how many rides you go on in search of an answer. Thinking too hard about tragedy presents the same dangers as taking your eyes off a cliffside trail to peer down: You'll go where you look. But don't ignore tragedy, either. Better to let the wind from a sudden swipe of Fate's unseen steel-toed boot barely tickle your leg. While sensing Fate nearby can mess up your line, it sure brings things into perspective. I need to live in the delusion of the safe as thousands of near-misses whiz by.