There is a black bicycle collecting dust in the garage. I caught myself calling it “my bike” the other day, even though it’s actually Dad’s bike and I haven’t ridden it since high school. Dad hasn’t ridden it in ages, either, but that’s not the point.
The point is that, while thinking about Father’s Day, I try to decide on a favorite childhood memory with my dad. It’s like when someone asks, “What’s your favorite song?” and I immediately forget the titles of every song I’ve ever heard. I love lots of songs and my dad gave me a wonderful childhood, but the moment I reach out, I can’t grasp anything. My head is clouded. Everything floats through my hands like smoke.
Alright, I think to myself, I’ll come up with something more recent.
I remember that recently a few friends of mine came over to hang out. When they were leaving, my dad got the door for them, and one of my friends said, “Bye, Dad.”
My friend immediately apologized, maybe with embarrassment, but my dad smiled and said, “No, that works. Dad’s good.”
I remember that I couldn’t stop myself from beaming. I must have looked like a giddy idiot, but all that pride and love needed to go somewhere, so my smile would have to do.
My dad has always made people feel safe around him. He plays host when my friends come over, remembers everything about them, asks how they’re doing and genuinely cares about the answer. He gives them advice. He’s goofy enough to cheer them up and serious enough to let them vent when they’re upset. He’s the best at explaining things, too — like the first time my car battery died and he explained to my friend and me over the phone how to hook up the jumper-cables properly.
Remembering jump-starting that car unspools another memory, and when I pull on that thread, fistfuls of memories tumble out. I remember when my dad taught me how to change a tire, when he taught me how to swim, when he taught me how to sew with a needle and then how to sew with the sewing machine.
I don’t remember when Dad taught me how to ride a bike, but I know that he did. It was probably a pink or yellow bike with streamers on the handlebars, but I imagine it as a miniature version of the black bike in the garage. I imagine falling off of that black bike and getting back up again because I’m alright if Dad is there. I imagine the rush of air against my face as I pedal forward, and I imagine clenching my fists around black handlebars and feeling the rubber flake under my hands. I don’t have to imagine being unafraid. Dad is behind me somewhere, so I’m fine. I can do it. And I do.
The real black bicycle is the one on which I biked to school as a teenager when I overslept and missed the bus. Nowadays, the bicycle sleeps in the garage, and I drive everywhere in the car that Dad bought me.
When I was preschool-age, my family had one car. We were privileged to have a car at all, of course, but I’m only bringing up the one car because it was the one in which Mom drove to work every day. That meant that when it was time to go to preschool, Dad hitched a bike trailer to the back end of that black bicycle, sat my sister and me down in the bike trailer, and biked us through the woods. He biked us down streets, too, but the woods are important because that’s where he taught us about snakes.
It’s another hazy childhood memory, but the rat snake must have been at least four or five feet long because it stretched languidly across the dirt path like a lazy rope. It was thick and black, and I imagine that where the sun came through the trees, the light glinted a little off its scales like a bright hello.
Dad stopped the bicycle to point out the snake to us. He probably told us that rat snakes have small teeth instead of fangs and that they’re not venomous, but I only remember the snake itself and how beautiful it was. Most of my friends are scared of snakes, but at that moment, I wasn’t afraid. I was safe. Dad was there.
Martina Litty is a Scotland County resident and summer intern from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
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