Letters by Deepa 04 | Bye bye, back seat
The child seat on the back of my bike comes off, and I’m feeling all the feelings.
This week my only child turns 8 years old. Aside from the multitude of small tasks wrapped up in this milestone—including planning a cooking-themed birthday party for 10 children—there is one particular job that must be done. It’s long overdue and fills me with a mixture of relief, wistful nostalgia, and dread.
And that is: removing the achterzitje, the child seat made of gray molded plastic that’s mounted on the back of my bicycle, on which my daughter has been a passenger for six years. I promised myself I’d do it when she turned 8, and it’s time.
Deepa on two wheels: a brief history
You might wonder why I say this is a relief. Well, unlike the Dutch, I wasn’t born with a bicycle between my legs.
My first bicycle was a gift from my mom for my fifth birthday. It was princessy pink, with white rubber handlebar grips and white training wheels that kept me well-supported on my five-minute bike rides to the playground. The quiet streets of our gated community reflected nothing of the chaos of real-life Manila traffic (in which anyone who cycles surely has a death wish), and I was happy and safe as could be on my little baby bike.
However, removing the back wheels at age 8 was a disaster. By this age I’d learned to stick only to things I was good at, which explains why I’m great at writing and socializing, and suck at ball sports and math.
With cycling in Manila being a purely recreational and optional activity, I gave up after my umpteenth scraped knee. Who needed this sh*t anyway?
Me, apparently—21 years later, when my husband signed a job offer that would relocate us to the Netherlands, cycling culture capital of the world.
“Maybe I should learn how to bike?” I ventured.
“Great idea! But if you want us to stay married, I can’t teach you,” he replied.
Fortunately for my marriage, I found an ad in the local newspaper (what’s that, Auntie? asks Gen Z) that proclaimed: “Learn how to bike in 4 hours or less!” Leaving it to the professionals seemed the smart thing to do.
Under the firm hand of good-humored, unflappable Uncle Edmund, I spent three afternoons cycling in circles on the ground floor of an HDB complex in Bukit Timah, where he owned a bicycle store. As advertised, I could move around on my own by the end of the third session, just under four hours.
I felt triumphant. No longer did I have to be embarrassed that the student after me was four years old. At the age of 29, I was a professionally trained cyclist!
I envisioned a glorious two-wheeled future awaiting me in Amsterdam. I would be virtually indistinguishable from the Dutch on their bikes, gliding effortlessly past windmills and cheese farms with a basket of tulips between my handlebars.
It turns out that cycling around the ground floor of an apartment building is nothing like cycling in the crazy, busy streets of Amsterdam, where a cyclist must have the speed and survival instincts of a shark.
Short legs, a weak core, almost nonexistent coordination and balance, and an inability to push off with either foot (I can only push off with my left, please don’t ask me why), and asthma make me a slow, nervous cyclist. My bicycle works hard to compensate for my quirks: it has smaller tires, a double kickstand for stability, handbrakes instead of the widely used backpedal ones, the lowest possible adult-size frame I could find, and a saddle that’s lowered all the way down.
Nothing fills me with anxiety like a drawbridge going up in the city; I’m convinced that one day I will be trampled under the wheels of Amsterdammers raring to be the first over the bridge when it comes down, like the running of the bulls in Pamplona.
I soon realized that I was less a professionally trained cyclist than a collection of weaknesses on two wheels.
Then I had a baby.
I’ve got all I need, right here in the passenger seat
Tala was close to one year old when I felt confident enough to put her on a front seat, after a few practice rounds in the park.
For the first year and a half, it all went quite well. It was so easy to just plop her in and take her with me everywhere. She loved it. I wondered what kind of impressions of the world she was forming, and if she would remember any of this.
I loved arriving home to find her fast asleep in the front seat, mouth open in a tiny O, cheeks streaked pink from the cold. I never fell with her on the bike, not even once. Uncle Edmund would be proud.
We switched over to the rear seat when she was two, almost three years old. By this time, her little Dutch friends were toddling along on their loopfiets, walking bikes or balance bikes. However, she would have none of it.
Tala showed an innate mistrust of wheeled transport that might very well be genetic. She refused to even look at the second-hand pink loopfiets we bought her at age two, and barely touched her first bike, bought at age four, except for a few photo ops.
Smart cookie that she was, she realized Mama and Papa might just find it faster and easier to carry her around on the back seat forever, and simply decided she didn’t have to exert much effort to learn.
Meanwhile, I watched Dutch mothers cycle alongside their children, robust miniature versions of themselves who already displaced confidence and athleticism on their little wheels. I admired how strong and capable those mothers seemed, especially when they would reach down, clamp a firm hand on their child’s shoulder, and shepherd them swiftly through four-way intersections and across busy streets. How did they do it?
Dutch parents seemed able to magically transmit speed, grace and sureness through the surface of their palms—qualities I myself never possessed and might never be able to give my daughter.
I dreaded the day I would have to attempt the firm-hand-guiding-maneuver myself and fail, and my daughter would see and know.
So the gray back seat remained fixed to my bicycle, as did my now not-so-little passenger.
Learning to ride on her own two wheels
Tala was around 5 or 6 when she started becoming too heavy for me, which is hard to admit in a nation where people routinely transport washing machines by bike.
One afternoon when the wind and rain were particularly brutal (it always is during school runs), my asthma kicked in. I was wheezing by the time we got to our street. “Tala, you really need to learn to cycle by yourself,” I gasped. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Crushed by my own admission, frustrated at myself, and physically exhausted by the effort, I went to lie down as soon as we arrived. After a while Tala crept up to me holding a drawing she’d made of a heart with wings. It said, “I love you very much, Mama.” Naturally, I cried.
That she loves me in spite of my limitations, and despite what I can’t do for her, is the wonder of the pure unconditional love of a child.
I still wonder why she chose to give the heart wings. Better than wheels, I suppose.
My husband, who was always the better athlete and more competent cyclist, took over her education, looping a towel around her chest and holding up the ends while she biked around the playground without rear wheels. When she found her balance—so easily, much more quickly than I did—cue the waterworks. My baby was growing up!
During lockdown, cycling through the neighborhood with Papa replaced gym class. By the time she turned 7, we began cycling to and from school most days. Then, to violin lessons and cooking classes, both further from home and along busier roads.
With every ride, her confidence grows. From napping in the front to absent-minded babbling in the back, she rides beside me now with an increasing awareness of the world around her, humming a tune as she does.
Rolling from childhood into the future
Taking the back seat off my bike is a matter of safety—she is way past the age and weight limit for this seat—but it is also a bittersweet moment.
It is an acknowledgment of my daughter’s growing independence, and acceptance of my own limitations and vulnerabilities as a mother. It is a conscious and necessary act of stepping away, letting her grow into her own, and hoping for the best.
I still sweat bullets at certain intersections. I can’t grab her by the collar to carry her through a crossing; it would only threaten my poor balance and we might both wipe out (my greatest fear). I still insist on a helmet; she’s the only kid in her class who wears one.
Last week one of her school friends came home with us to play at ours, and for the first time I had to shepherd two seven year-olds on bikes instead of one. From my position at the rear, they looked like miniature teenagers, chattering away as they pedaled.
In my mind’s eye, the road fell away and suddenly I saw my daughter’s future stretching into the distance. I could see her rolling away from me on two wheels, picking up speed, swift, sure and inevitable.
I saw her zipping down city streets with a hockey stick on her back and muddy socks up to her knees, like so many teenage Dutch girls; giggling with a girlfriend on the back, hopping off and jumping on at stoplights; pedaling alongside a boy with their fingers lightly entwined, her long black hair streaming behind her in the wind.
I saw her cycling off to music festivals in the spring and to the beach in the summer, riding home from smoky clubs and crowded bars, coasting on autopilot even after a few beers, as all Amsterdammers do.
I saw her riding into her future, away from me, her baby bike, and her childhood, with a grace and confidence all her own.
The gray child seat on the back of my bike hasn’t been used in months; mossy green dots are growing on the straps from rain and neglect.
When I finally unscrew it from its mounting, I know my heart will feel heavy, even though my bike will feel so much lighter.
Perhaps I’m going to need that heart with wings after all.
It’s time.
Thank you so much for reading to the end!
As always, I love to know what you think, so hit that reply button. I am especially curious as to what your formative experiences of cycling may have been like, and if there’s anyone out there who is as bad a cyclist as I am!
And if you like what you read, please do share it with someone.
I have so many ideas about what to write next. I suppose I just have to pick one.
See you in two weeks!
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Lovely read Deepa. Love the wings part. Riding a bike has given you both wings. All at our own pace. And yes, seeing Tala going her own way now is a bit scary. But learning as young as she is, she’ll be fine. I love seeing the world go by on my bike. And yes! Cycling through Amsterdam is a challenge... I can recall the image that I got my first bike here at the age of eight. Having to learn too. Having to cross the tramrails and ended up in them with my front wheel.. I still dodge them. My bike is my freedom :)