Letting Go

Today Colin said that he wants to ride his bike to school for the first day of Kindergarten.

"Okay, sure."

"Hey, do you want to try and learn how to ride without your training wheels today?" I asked, secretly fearing that all the other bike riders would be arriving without training wheels.

"Sure!"

And so we all headed over to Colin's new school where we had the parking lot to ourselves. We'd had a sense for a while now that Colin could probably give it a go without his training wheels, but in the busyness of day to day life in our family, we just hadn't gotten around to trying it. Plus, Carter also loves riding Colin's bike and for sure he still needs some extra support when riding.

Chris played on the playground with the younger boys and Colin and I got to it.

We started out by having him peddle while I ran next to him holding the handle bars and his shirt, tightly. Gradually I began to loosen my hold and give him the reigns. Slowly but surely he found his sense of balance, control and confidence. At one point he said, "You know, I think the faster I peddle, the more stability I have." 

Umm, okay, what grade are you going into?? Stability?? I didn't know that was in his vocabulary, haha. He was right though. :-)

Eventually, when I was only ever so slightly holding onto his shirt, he said that I could let go but, "Stay close Mom!"

Round and round the parking lot we cruised. Him peddling and me running beside him, ready to catch him if he fell.

And then, kind of suddenly it seemed, he said, "Mommy, you don't need to run beside me anymore."

Colin, although I was so out of breath from running that I felt like I was going to collapse, I wasn't ready to let you go! I wasn't sure you were ready. I mean, what if you fell? But I kept my mouth shut, stopped running next to you and let you go.....

And you took off flying. With confidence, with a smile, and yelling, "Hey Carter, you see THIS?!"