Look Kids, No Hands!
by Sandra A. Miller

That’s me on the neighborhood playground basketball court. I am trying to defy physics but so far I’m failing, well, falling, over and over again. Still, that’s what the instruction book says. If you want to learn to unicycle, you will spend approximately eight hours trying and falling.
               
When people pass, they stare and grin hard. They have to. I am a petite, 42-year-old suburban mother trying to balance her body on a seat that rests on a pole attached to a wheel. And like a kid who won’t take no for an answer, I keep trying. The more vocal passersby call out some version of the following: Hey, you know you’re missing a wheel? Or You got ripped off when you bought that bike! Sometimes, simply Wow! The latter is either a reaction to my gutsy attempt at actually riding this thing or, more likely, a commentary on the spectacle of me falling ass-backwards onto hard cement, approximately once per minute.

The other possible reaction (this has happened twice already) is that some middle-aged guy comes by and says to his children, loudly enough that I can overhear, “You know Daddy used to ride one of those things in college.” At which point I feel compelled to turn to this friendly fellow and say, “Wanna try?”

He says, “Sure, if you don’t mind.” Then, I kid you not, he proceeds to free mount my uni (sounds dirty, but it just means getting on without holding something) and pedals his way around the court like he’s been tenured at Ringling Brothers. This demonstration confirms my hypothesis that unicycling is typically a talent developed by either young Russian circus children or college-aged males in engineering schools who have too much time on their hands along with a pressing need to burn off excess testosterone. Since I fall into neither category, I obviously have a different reason for learning this mostly useless skill. Well, four reasons, actually.

My first and long-term reason came from seeing my husband Mark’s unicycle, lying dusty from neglect in the recesses of our basement. Since I’ve known him, I’ve had fantasies about mastering it. My husband got his uni thirty years ago and learned to ride in his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. He used to weave on his wheel through the city streets, astounding even the Yalies who are never easily impressed. Some years later, when he became a Yalie himself, he would ride along with the marching band or wheedle his way into street parades, affirming his own theory about unicyling, which is this: there is absolutely no reason in the world to ride one except for the purpose of showing off.

But allow me to argue. My second reason for learning to unicycle is to stave off boredom. You see my children, Phinny, 8, and Addie, 5, are at ages where I don’t have to guard them so closely. They have both reached a level of playground self-sufficiency in which my job is to feed and water them and occasionally pretend to eat mud pies from their bakery under the climbing structure.
               
My first noticeable progress evokes cheers from my husband who is behind me chasing our kids. My progress? I fall forward – not backwards – then catch the seat between my legs. I look like I am standing over a toilet wiping myself, but I swear this is a huge step.
               
The following week, I’m out there again. My son and daughter bike in circles around me on the court and, with some desperation about needing space, I keep shooing them away. As they coast out of my learner’s circle, I hug the steel pole that’s holding up the basketball hoop the way a baby koala clings to the branch of a eucalyptus tree. I then position my pedals – one up, one down – and shove off, trying to re-create my progress from the previous week.
               
My son learned to ride a two-wheeler when he was five. My daughter, hell-bent on keeping up with him, mastered it at three-and-a-half. I was their champion, their one-woman cheering committee who ran stooped-back behind them in countless failed spurts while they wheeled and wailed with fierce determination toward this childhood rite of passage. When Phinny fell hard and refused to touch his bike again for months, I didn’t push, well, OK, a little. As much as I want my children to know I support the pace of their learning, I also want children who do not balk at challenges. When the day came that Phinny was inexplicably just ready to try again, he got it on his first attempt. Whoosh! He rode off and hardly stopped pedaling for the next two hours. He rode until dark. He rode until my husband arrived home to an empty house and an answering machine message that said Hurry to the playground. We have something to show you.      

Now it’s reversed. My children are chasing me with words of encouragement and otherwise, “Good try!” they shout as I dust myself off. Or, “You really stink at this, Mom.” When their friends come by to gape, my son explains, “She’s learning to ride a unicycle. She’s not very good.” Which bring me to my third reason for learning: If I want my kids to fearlessly take on the impossible, unafraid of looking the fool, who better than me, their mother, to demonstrate how it is done?

Over and over, my friend David, whose children are playing nearby, helps me get started then buoys my spirits with kind words when I pitch forward and tumble off. But every time he lets go of my hand, I pull off five or six rotations on my own. “As soon as I leave, you’ll get it,” he promises. A few minutes later, I watch as David and his minivan full of children drive away. I carefully mount the seat, sit up straight, lean forward, take a deep breath, push off and pedal like I’m escaping a fire. And without a helping hand, it happens. I sail across the basketball court almost effortlessly. I’m doing it! I’m riding a unicycle but I may as well have climbed Everest. It’s the feeling of achieving something that, even a moment ago, seemed so impossible – a seat on a pole on a wheel. My arms are aflutter like a baby bird’s wings and I am suddenly struck less by the accomplishment itself than the sense of freedom it delivers. It’s absolutely the closest I’ve ever felt to flying, “Look kids! No hands!” I shout, just before I tumble over the lip of the court and onto the apron of grass. I roll on my back, completely joyous and giggling like a five-year-old, giddy over her own success.

I look across the playground to see if my children saw. They did. They are cheering wildly from the monkey bars. They rush over to hug me, and as we lie in a happy heap on the ground, I get out my cell phone and leave a message for my husband.

“Come to the playground right away,” I say. “We have something to show you.”

Sandra A. Miller's essays have appeared in over 100 print and online publications including Modern Bride, FamilyFun and Literarymama.com. Recently, Trudie Styler, Sting's wife, turned one of Sandra's personal essays into a short Hollywood film called “Wait,” produced by Glamour magazine. She and her psychologist husband run an irreverent relationship Web site called HaveAQuickie.net.

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