Pushing Until It Breaks
Peering over the edge
Dear Friend,
Eddie Kidd came to our town one summer. He was the most famous person I’d ever seen. He was on the television, a stunt rider for James Bond. He rode his motorcycle up a ramp and jumped over a bus lengthways. Or maybe it was three buses side by side. I can hear my Dad ‘Probably was one knowing our cheapskate town.’ He had that kind of humour.
I think it was one bus. So for Eddie it probably wasn’t such a big deal. He was a world champion.
The smell of the petrol fumes was adrenalin to me.
Really handsome too, in an Elvis kind of way. Elvis was a hero to me then. Before he spoiled it by dying.
Eddie sent us kids into a frenzy of jumping over improvised ramps on our bicycles. We’d make them out of anything we could find. Compacted dirt was the best, but we’d use any discarded material we came across. Bendy particle boards, we’d ride over them till they broke. You hoped it would be you who made the thing crack.
One day my bike snapped in two. Just like that, I found myself standing in the dirt, handle bars still in hand. It felt like the bike had melted under me. Stupefied I felt betrayed. We’d been all over, me and that little red bike. It had solid rubber tires so you couldn’t get a puncture. It wasn’t a comfortable ride, but comfort was not the measure of a bike for me then. Speed and invulnerability were the key.
Dad had the break welded at his work, it came back with a brassy collar for a scar. It was the beginning of the end for us. Somehow I just didn’t trust that scar to hold good. It made me hyper vigilant, we never relaxed together again. The break could give way at any moment, I could feel it coming.
I rode the bike harder, tried to jump more extreme ramps, landed heavier. I pushed the bike till one day it broke at the weld. I dragged it home to our back garden and wept. Didn’t let anyone see me.
Funny how kids will push and push till we find the edge. Can I trust you is the question. I pushed my Dad like that. He wasn’t as resilient as the bike, his temper easy to break. If I couldn’t get his attention by being a good boy there were other alternatives. A fine line between getting a reaction and not getting Mam into hot water. Dad was far too wily to let me get away with much. Takes a thief they say.
He knew how to get a reaction too.
Dad never grew up. I wonder how many men don’t.
Grandad neither
As far as I can tell, I’m third generation adult child of an adult child. I could’ve so easily been a lost cause if it wasn’t for living in London. That first time I sat in the therapists leather chair. Comfy and warm and relaxed I heard someone talking, like that’s what he needed more than anything. Someone listening. Awful cheesy new age piano music wafting in the background, a kind of cocoon for a new self emerging.
Maybe you have someone in your life who pushes.
Maybe you’re doing the pushing.
Just seeing it.
It’s okay.
We’re complicated and simple all at once.
We cry for love in so many ways.
And we express it.
Two ends of a spectrum, love and fear.
Love pouring into you, through you and from you.
For when you are afraid.
May love come to you.
Always.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey