On bicycles and balance, or, how I learned to fall and get back in the saddle

The first time I took a serious fall off my bike was at Jornada Elementary School in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where I was a second grader. It was my first bike and it had a gold frame and thick, rubber non-flat tires. I learned to ride it with training wheels that my dad removed once I found my balance. Sometimes I rode it to school, a red-brick building that sat on a hill. This particular day after class let out, I looked both ways at the street below before climbing on and starting down the hill. The momentum I gathered on the way down would get me well out onto the street before I had to assert any effort for the ride home.

Next thing I knew I was laying on the ground, my bike tossed beside me. It took me a few shaky moments to see what had happened. I’d failed to consider the heavy, barrel-shaped, “Stop when children on crosswalk” sign that someone rolled out into the street every day, and I had crashed into it. My classmates Chris, Pat and Tommy rushed over to help me. The non-flat tires? They weren’t flat, but the rubber was shredded into long slivers, so the boys half-rolled and half-carried my bike home for me. 

It wouldn’t be my last fall off a bike.

***

In my 40s, I experienced a different kind of fall. The publishing industry was in decline so I left my newspaper job to find my way as a freelancer. Shortly afterward my mother-in-law was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Then almost overnight, the recession swept across the country like a tidal wave, toppling industries, corporations and livelihoods. And then my own mother, too, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. As the country reeled from the loss of millions of jobs and businesses, two women who had been very independent suddenly needed our constant attention.

We held onto my husband’s small production company by the skin of our teeth. My mother-in-law went into residential care. My siblings and I patched together a network of care for our own mother, one that included us. When I wasn’t working, I was traveling the 600 miles to or from my mom’s home to help with doctor appointments or relieve caregivers.

Exercise became one of my few escapes. For those short periods of time when I was walking or lifting or jumping, I was the girl on the bike, hope in her heart as she flew unknowingly toward a metal stop sign. 

Sometimes I brought my mom with me to North Texas. At that point in her illness, she always slept late, and my husband and I would sneak out of the house at 5 a.m. to power through a spin workout. It was an hour of respite from the pressure of having to function as my mother’s brain. 

Sometimes as I pedaled to the loud music and the instructor’s commands, I wondered what would it be like to ride outside, the sun on my face, the trees a green blur. We had abandoned a pair of hybrid bikes that we rode for several years before our mothers got sick. Now I saw cyclists on road bikes zipping around in their colorful gear, and I was envious. Between saving our business and keeping our mothers alive there was little time for long outdoor rides. We couldn’t afford good road bikes anyway—every extra penny went to pay for my mom’s care. 

***

We eventually rehabbed the old hybrids. We got new chains and tubes, and had the brakes calibrated. We added clip-in pedals. If I could clip into a studio bike, I could clip into my hybrid. Right?

I took the bike out of my driveway on a sunny afternoon and rode it up and down the street a few times. Then I turned back into the driveway and hit the brakes. And immediately realized my error. 

“It was like a tree falling,” my husband said later. “I heard you shout and I turned around just in time to see you tip right over.”

***

The thing no one tells you about caring for a terminally ill loved one — especially with a slow-moving disease — is that unlike learning to ride and balance on a bicycle, there are no training wheels. You have to learn to do it on your own. Sure, people can give you advice, they can tell you what worked for them, but you just have to get on and start pedaling. You pray you can find a balance that will keep you in the saddle for a while. And when you fall — and you will fall — you just get back on and start pedaling again. You have no choice; your loved one’s life is at stake.  

The other thing they don’t tell you is that as your loved one’s needs become greater, your own life becomes narrower. There’s no time to repair your leaky faucet because you’re planning an ADA-compliant shower in your parent’s house. You forego the paint job your kitchen needs because you’re juggling finances to add another person to your mother’s caregiving rotation. You lose sleep because of that call before dawn saying your mother walked out of the house and the police are looking for her. Finally, you begin passing up the freelance gigs because you’re interviewing hospices, and you have no idea when the end will come but you know you’ll need to be there.

Some stretches on this journey, there is no balance. You just keep falling. And getting back on.

***  

Sometimes, when caring for someone who is terminally ill, you dream of the day they will be free from that illness. You don’t wish for death, but you wish for an end to suffering. You wish for a day when you might coast down a hill on a bike, the sun shining, the wind in your hair.

I don’t know what it was about a road bike that I thought would make me feel better, but the yearning was there. Maybe what I really craved was the feeling of going somewhere, the feeling that I was moving forward. Caring for someone with dementia is about stopping, or at least delaying, time; you try to keep the afflicted person stable so as to delay the inevitable. You hit plateaus when things seem to be in balance — no decline even though they’re not getting better. Still, you know what the end will be.

On a bike, for those few moments that you’re flying down a hill, there is no end, only joy as you hurtle forward.

***

In 2012, I took a trip with some cousins to visit my mom’s small hometown in Mexico. She could no longer travel but I carried her in my heart. I laughed a lot with my cousins on that trip. But I also sobbed in a church while a choir sang one of my mom’s favorite songs. As I drifted to sleep at night, tears slid onto my pillow. 

On my last day there, I had a vision. It was a sunny afternoon, and I was committing the town to memory. And as I lifted my camera to snap a photo of a mare and her colt grazing at the side of the road, I suddenly saw my mother walking down that street as a young woman, surrounded by her own cousins. She was laughing as she turned her head to look back at me. She was happy.

In her youth, she had walked this road, the sun on her face, its warmth on her skin. She had felt freedom riding her horse sidesaddle on this rural patch of land. She had gone on to experience pain – a daughter who died at birth, a divorce – but she had also experienced joy in watching her other children grow up. 

They surrounded her bed when she died more than a year later. I held her hand as she took her last breath and realized that in the balance, she’d had a full life.

***

When my friends picked me and my bike off the ground after I ran into the crosswalk sign in second grade, I remember being stunned. I wasn’t hurt, though. What I don’t recall about that fall is fear. I wasn’t afraid to get back on that bike. My parents got me new tires and I climbed back on the bike. And when I grew bigger, I got another bike, a blue banana-seater with plastic tassels dangling from the handlebars.  

What people don’t tell you about falling off a bike as an adult, especially when you fall because you can’t get your feet out of the clips fast enough, is that you might feel a stab of fear at the thought of getting back on. By the time we reach our 40s most of us have a sense of our own mortality. We’ve lost our sense of invincibility. 

When I fell in my driveway, that fear reared its head. I felt off-balance. And reluctant to get back on. 

***

Something else people don’t tell you about losing someone after a protracted illness — especially when you’ve been one of their caregivers — is that even though death is expected, it will still throw you off balance.

After my mother died, I faced an expanse of time that I’d not had in years. It unfurled before me, long, empty, and so rich with possibilities that some days I got lost in it. I’d put lunches with friends on my calendar and then forget to meet them. 

I went back to my favorite spin class once, but the room felt so small and my grief felt so big. Only beyond those four walls was there was enough space for me to mourn. Enough space to explore my life again, to begin finding my balance.  

A few months after my mother died, my husband and I walked in to Mad Duck Cyclery in Grapevine, Texas. A friend had recommended we see Clarence, the owner, a man who turned out be incredibly generous with his time and knowledge. He took some measurements and recommended a blue and black, German-engineered aluminum body with a carbon fiber fork — not a machine for professional racers, but a good one we newbies could afford. 

***

I was 52. And in love.

Everything I had imagined about being on my road bike was true. It was smooth. It was light. It was so fast it ate up the miles. It was the feeling I’d anticipated when I rode down the hill from my elementary school on my little gold bike—minus the crosswalk sign.

What’s difficult to put into words about cycling is that it gives you an entirely different high than running, or any other kind of exercise. I love my Camp Gladiator boot camp. I’ve run countless 5ks, 10ks and a few 15ks and a couple of half marathons. There’s nothing like the challenge of pushing your body to its maximum endurance. But riding a bike put me back in touch with that childhood joy and the freedom that wheels first gave me. You could go a lot farther and faster with your bike. Pedal fast enough and you could almost fly. The combination of my body and machine yielded a potent exhilaration. I felt like a super hero — like Wonder Woman and her magic sword and bracelets. Anything was possible.

Those early rides on my road bike made me think of my mom. Of the days when I had let her sleep while I snuck out to get in a spin class. Of how during some of those classes, I felt like I was pulling her behind me, along with the weight of nonstop financial, medical, legal and mundane decisions that come with caring for someone with this illness. I didn’t feel that way on my road bike. Perhaps it was the letting go of these demands, of knowing my mom was no longer trapped in a body and mind that didn’t function correctly. But it was also the sheer physical nature of outdoor cycling. You had to lean carefully into the turns. You had to keep pedaling or you’d fall over. Pumping up a steep hill left no energy to think about anything else except the whoosh of my breath, in and out, in and out, my legs pushing and pulling, anticipating that crest and the inevitable, glorious rush down the other side.

Sometimes, as I coasted down the other side, I remembered the way my mother smiled at me in that vision I had in Mexico. And I smiled back.

***

I’ve been riding for seven years now. With my cycling buddies I’ve ridden some of the most fun Texas rallies ranging from 25 to 50 miles of hilly country roads lined by horse farms and wildflowers. My husband and I have even shipped our bikes to California twice to ride the MS Waves to Wine with some work colleagues. 

I still fall occasionally. One time a neighbor called out to me and I couldn’t navigate a tight turn to respond. On a Fort Worth trail I took a curve too fast and hit a puddle of muddy slime that sent me skidding. But here’s the thing: Both riding and taking care of my mom have taught me that balance isn’t something that just happens. I’m going to fall. Sometimes it’ll be hard to get back up. I will experience fear. But the other side of fear is the freedom that made me get back on my little gold bike after I crashed into that sign. If I want that, I have to get back on. If I want the joy of the sun in my face and the wind rushing by, I need to get back on. 

So, I will.