The weekend before last, it was time to take off the training wheels on Joe's bike. It was hard for me, when I learned, so long ago -- 1973, I think -- to take off my wheels, which meant, to return the bike we had borrowed with training wheels, and to borrow someone else's, without. I learned on Stuart Avenue, on a sidewalk, in the Fan. I remember it took me a while to go straight, and longer still to turn, in the two-square pavements on the sidewalk I was allowed to ride.
It took Joe no time at all. He started on Saturday, when we took the wheels off. And by Sunday, he was riding straight, and turning when he chose, and it was all - all - the perfect moment that we all wish for. On Sunday, we started the day with Carol and I holding the seat of his bike while he rode, running and quick-walking as fast as we could, and by the end of the day, he was riding away, far away, to smack into the curb or bounce off a hard turn into his path. But he did it on his own.
I have a picture very much like this on my phone. I showed it to a friend of mine in Massachusetts, and she said, "There he is, riding away."
On the same day he was learning, I heard a characteristic whistle - the sound of a red-tailed hawk, learning to fly. They sound a little like a broad-winged, then, I think, the baby red-tailed frustrated and scared and unclear on its role in the sky. Red-tails are the most numerous large airborne predator, it seems (consult someone who knows to see if this is true), and yet of course they are both epigenetically and realistically always second to the eagles, even if those predators' numbers are greatly reduced now from the primeval era (and the red-tails, presumably, increased).
The whistle they make is plaintive. It is nevertheless beautiful. And as they learn to fly, you see them everywhere -- high, and low, and in the middle, often accompanied within hundreds of yards or only a few feet by their parents. It is so lovely.
It was, of course, mostly coincidence, all but the beauty. There was Joe, learning. there was the hawk, a baby with a killing beak and a future of frequent and necessary murder, learning. We all have to let go, to give them their wings. What luck. What a scary moment. What a terror. What glory it is.
And it's still only beginning.
