Last Indonesian Mother’s day, 22th of December 2018, there was a lovely gift from my first son. He was learning to ride a bicycle and then he was able to cycle by his own! Without any extra side wheels. It was my husband who led him to practice cycling.
The days before, he tried to ride his bicycle. It was his own initiative to take the bicycle after a long time he never tried cycling again. He stopped cycling since the extra wheels for his bike was taken out. Looking Kalki was trying to ride his bicycle, my husband then helped him to learn.
Kalki took 3 days to learn cycling until he became confident to ride on his own. He learned cycling at our front yard. When my husband no longer held the bicycle for the first balance, Kalki got on his bicycle by the help of our terrace step. Then he could make it, cycling around.
It was a perfect present for me on the mother’s day. As a mother of course I felt proud to Kalki. Kalki was 5 years old 7 month and he has been able to ride a bicycle… I am very happy everytime I see him cycling. He feels happy too that he can ride a bicycle! Because our front your doesn’t have enough space for him cycling, we went to his kindergarten’s yard so he could practice at a wide yard.
Once I ran with Kalki riding his bicycle. It was fun and challenging because our village is hilly and the road is either going up or down. Going uphill is hard, on the other hand going downhill is dangerous. On the uphill and downhill roads I asked Kalki to walk but on some downhills I let him to ride his bicycle and use the brakes. It was difficult to maintain the brakes during sliding through the downhills so Kalki bumped to a house’s wall, haha don’t worry he was fine. He enjoys the experience and he wants more! He asked me, “mama, when are you going to run again? Because I want to join you by riding my bicycle.” Well, his bike’s brake and chain are broken now so he cannot join me.
I also would like to share my childhood story. I think this one will be interesting to tell.
When I was young, I always wanted to learn how to ride a bicycle. I was a very young kid. Maybe about 5 years old. At that time my parents already bought me a small bicycle but there were two extra wheels to keep my balance. Next stage, my parents taught me how to ride a bicycle without any extra wheels. At first, my father tried to give only one extra wheel. He handled my bicycle and let me try to paddle on my own until I could get my balance.
I kept practicing how to ride a bicycle until I was confident enough and my parents thought that I would be able to paddle a bicycle without an extra wheel. So again, my father took off the remaining extra wheel on my bike. He was always there to help me while I practiced riding a bicycle. He handed my bike for the first time and when I could paddle with balance, he let me go riding away. We repeated this way until I could handle my bike in the beginning for myself.
I felt so excited when I could ride a bicycle by myself. It was almost felt like I was flying and free. When a small kid eventually could ride a bicycle on her own she became addicted to riding her bicycle again, and again and again. I rode my bicycle around my house in the neighborhoods. Sometimes I went quite far so that my mother worried about me because it took a long time for me to come back home. Later on, my parents allowed me to ride my bicycle to school in elementary school. I really enjoyed it. I even gave a ride to my little brother when I went to school by bike because we went to the same school. We went to school together by bike, my little brother sat on the back as my passenger.
♥️ Intan Rastini
Intan Rastini 