My mom bought my first bike. There was a story in the local paper about a couple of hippies who had opened a bike shop and the cool English brand they were carrying—Raleigh. I think my mother was a closeted hippie, so buying my first bike from some Vietnam-protesting longhairs dispensed with the condescension she feared and offered a slight counterculture thrill at the same time.
She took action after she spied me pedaling a neighbor’s bike and recognized the joy riding brought me. She told my father I needed a bike. She selected a Raleigh Chopper that begat my love of all things orange.
My mother was the first person to encourage me to ride when she saw I was stressed. When depression’s talons hooked me, she would always ask if I’d been riding.
On more than one occasion, she stood in the garage and watched me assemble my travel bike. She rarely asked questions, preferring to watch as if I appeared on TV, but occasionally she’d point to something and ask the significance of that part. She found fascination in the many bolts I turned and minute adjustments I made, and marveled at how I performed it all from muscle memory. “And just like that, it’s a bike,” she once said.
My mother cared about my happiness the way most mothers care if you’ve eaten. One Christmas, she bought me a sweatshirt with Joseph Campbell’s quote to, “Follow your bliss.” She had endorsed my riding and my writing, and when I crossed those beams, she was the first to cheer.
Every time I published something, she had to know where it appeared. My mother subscribed to or bought every issue of every magazine I ever published. She bought each of my books. Of the many things I’ve written, it’s possible none of them would thrill her the way this would, but she left us on the first of May. This is my first Mother’s Day in which I won’t speak to her.
She once told me that through my work she knew the joy of riding, even though she hadn’t coasted through a corner since I was born.