Carrying Me

One particular afternoon my brother Jeff, who is four and a half years older, and I, had been sparring back and forth about who was a better rider. So we decided to race on the road to prove once and for all who the superior mini bike operator was. These were the days before helmet use was a concern for most people including my family. As we headed out to the road for the duel, I was sporting my blue jeans and my short sleeved “Star Trek” shirt, so called because they resembled the shirt the crewmen wore on the famed series. The race started just west of our driveway on Bonz Beach Highway. Jeff was taunting me to ride faster so I leaned out over the handled bars to offer less wind resistance. We were neck in neck as we roared past the Morgan’s driveway. From this point the entire memory is in slow motion. I glanced to my left to see where Jeff was and as I turned my head back to look forward I caught a glimpse of a pot hole the size of Montana that was about to swallow me and my Rupp mini bike whole. My front tire had slipped over the edge of the abyss, suddenly striking the other side of the hole, it jerked and twisted one of the handle bars back into my small forward leaning body. This sudden stop cast me over the front handle bars slowly rotating like a pig on a spigot. Soon the unforgiving gravel road met my then eight year old body, which had spun to my right side. I distinctly remember bouncing like a flat stone on a calm lake. My momentum slowed and was finally halted in the tall grass on the side of the road. Moaning and looking up through the long grass I could see that I had stopped inches short of the Morgan’s barbed wire fence that ran parallel to the road, west of their driveway.

It was at this moment that I noticed it. I’m not sure how much time had passed, or even what had happened to my brother, but off in the distance, back in the direction of our summer home, I saw a figure running. Even in my post crash shock that was beginning to take over my thinking ability, I was familiar with the figure. I also knew that I had never seen that particular man run that fast my whole life. My dad was in full sprint down that road. Not usually known to me for his athletic prowess, my dad was, at that moment, the fastest man alive. At this point the weight of my head overcame my ability to hold it up and I lay there in the grass wondering what had happened, why my side hurt and faintly hearing my brother asking me if I was ok. In my next conscious moment, my father was scooping me out of the grass and carrying me back to our little northern refuge. That image still to this day brings tears to my eyes, as a surge of emotion wells up inside of me. My father carried me. My father rescued me. My father ran to me like the father of the prodigal son ran to meet his once dead child that was returned to life.

I spent the remainder of that particular vacation in bed picking gravel out of my raw right side and my oozing arm around my elbow. My favorite shirt ruined, one mini bike bent and scratched, yet repairable. I also had the distinct picture that I could trust my dad to respond to my train wrecks with love and concern, which is a picture that many have never known.