photo credit: planetgordon.com | flickr creative commons

I was a baby when my father strapped me into a plastic seat bolted behind his saddle. I don’t have a memory of this ride, but I can construct a composite mental image from pictures of my childhood in the late ‘70s. There we are, squinting into the sun. My father has a perm, and his shorts are very short. His front basket is loaded with library books. No one’s wearing a helmet. If he wipes out, it’s books and brains all over the road.  

 

But he never wiped out with me in the bucket. My father kept our family safe through a combination of wariness and grit. My mother was highly allergic to bee stings, so whenever a bee came near, my father would grab it out of the air and crush it in his hand, grunting softly as it stung his palm.

 

Growing up, I had a feeling that nothing bad could happen to me as long as my father was around. A lot of kids have this feeling, I know, but most can’t point to the evidence of a swollen palm.