The bench that built us

A story of being seen and believing in yourself

The crisp morning air sounds full and muted with waking birds. My body still from sleep and my mind aware of the waking world through our bedroom’s open window. The chirps and calls of birds, a car on the main road in the distance and the voluminous flow of the tides paint a spherical picture in my mind’s eye. The birdsong, soft and slow at first in time with the easing of deep blue to dawn, loudest and quickest at the fullest glow of orange morning light and then becoming still in the bright peach of the morning light. Slowing and quieting with the pale blue and yellows of the crescendo of sunrise.

The morning heat fills our room with a preview of the sweltering heat it will become like a din during breakfast increasing to a blare on the drive to the children’s first mountain biking race. In the cool shade between the farm office building and lifestyle centre I offload two junior bikes. The seats and metal frame hot on the back of our vehicle. Beads of sweat pool under my sunglasses, on top of my nose and upper lip while I lift the bikes from the rack. The top of my son’s red helmet is the first to exit the back passenger side and he is the first to start pedalling eager circles on the open paving between parked cars. Water bottles slippery with condensation slide easily into their cages below. On the brisk walk to the registration table, I follow them cycling between the small-wheeled helter-skelter of colourful helmets, bunny hopping onto pavements and down steps. Their school coach meets us at the registration table, dust clouds rising around it with the sun and the first schools league mountain bike boards are fixed to each of their front bars with cable ties.

Unseeded at their first race, two brothers join the back of closely bunched bikes at the start line. After wishing them luck, I fill a space along the railing with the front of the start line filling the full frame of my cell phone camera screen and share the memory with my husband. Today this place that pushes the children to grow not overlapping to include their father to safely witness. A half smile forms on my closed lips, remembering their first balance bikes, rides along the beachfront and gravel paths nearby, and I wait like a wildlife photographer blending into the surroundings, for the start whistle.

My first memory of riding a bicycle is in my childhood home. My sister on her smaller blue bike and me with my black Raleigh, would take turns pedalling up and down the long side passage of our semi-detached house.  The passage ran from the front door, passed the second then third bedroom door to where the passage mouth dissolved into a round room lined with intricately carved wooden sofas. I can still hear the front door rattling in the frame after pushing down hard with my little feet to sprint and hit the supper-plate-sized front tyre against the bottom of the white glossy-painted front door. My gap-toothed grin thrilled by the spinning pedals and not releasing my small-fingered grasp to tighten the rear brake callipers that slow the bike down.

I press record on the phone’s touchscreen and wait a few seconds until I see one of my sons return to start the second lap, and his brother close behind. Their excited eyes flick up to me, identifying my voice above other parents’ cheers, encouraging them by their names one after the other. I capture their flared nostrils as their lungs feed them with fuel and their pumping legs as they turn the corner and cycle away, into the dust the lifts behind. A breath I did not intend to be so deep escapes me as a sigh and I stop the recording, pleased at my timing and that I could feel them nearing.

My childhood home at the foot of Table Mountain gave few options for a 7-year-old to cycle. Our front door opened to a steep staircase wide at one end and narrowing to where my small feet could not fit. These concrete pizza slices piled one above as though threaded at their narrowest point ended in front yard and pavement. Beyond the front gate, the road angled sharply downhill that if they were gravel and not black tar the cars may have veered sideways instead.

At the finisher’s table, the children slow from their incredible speeds, each looking like they have energy for more laps. They choose a flavour of juice between panting breaths and a medal is placed over their lowered helmeted heads. The dust from the cyclists ahead sticking to their sweaty faces and around the opening of their noses, mottling their now tanned skin with natural shades of camouflage and tiredness. The sun catches the metal at the end of the ribbon against their chests and I imagine it flashing a morse code spelling victory.

Pedalling back to the car, medals bouncing at their chest, “Pappa, we finished the race. Look at our medals.”

In their bedrooms with each medal in their special home, we relive the morning in the cinema of our minds. Each sharing their experience while we wash the breakfast dishes, tidy rooms and prepare lunch – chores missed earlier the morning. My memory replays a moment twenty years before, after my first mountain bike race showing my finisher’s medal the next day to disinterested colleagues. I started mountain biking again as a hobby late into my twenties with savings from my first job and the pride of my accomplishments now settled into my own heart, the medal still in its special place all these years later. I look again outward away from that person, my old self yearning for the acknowledgement of strangers. That dark night contrasted with the sunshine beaming out of my own children’s bright faces.