I was eight years old, sitting at the dining table of my family home. With an open box of Ding Dongs, I searched the Simpson-Sears’ Spring catalogue for my dream home Barbie and Ken style. Flipping through items of favour, I dog-eared the pages editing and re-editing until I had it down to just a few special things.
Tucked between the Barbie camper-van and the Light-Bright set, something caught my attention. A small tear-out reading, Father’s Day Writing Competition—First place $500 shopping spree. A spark inside of me ignited, what if I could win? I grabbed my peppermint scented, candy-cane pen and my best stationary, adorned with Shultz’s Snoopy, the Red Baron. I knew exactly what to write about.
My parents had recently purchased me a second—maybe third, hand bike. It was affordable and ridable, but needed TLC. Dad promised to take it apart, fix the bent wheel and chain that incessantly fell off and add a chain-guard so the cuffs on my favourite denims wouldn’t get caught or greased up as I rode.
Grey duct tape criss-crossed the gold-glitter banana seat letting through small tufts of foam stuffing. But it was a banana seat, they were the coolest. The bike was my favourite colour, purple.
Dad had been working on the bike for over a week. I hadn’t seen much of him or the bike over this time. He worked shifts that sometimes brought him home just as I was leaving for school and he would rarely be awake when I arrived back home. He worked on the bike while I was at school and told me I wasn’t allowed to see it until it was done. Though it near killed me to keep away from the little port-hole window on our laundry room door that led to a view into our garage, I did as Dad asked. I looked forward to the excitement that would match a Christmas morning tree-footing full of unopened presents.
Walking up our street, I was surprised to see the garage door was up. Dad’s tool cabinet was rolled out onto the asphalt drive. His Honda motorbike, which he seemed to love taking apart and putting back together just for fun, sat unattended beside the tool kit. Dad’s red t-shirt and patterned-blue welders cap were bent over something else in the driveway.
As I got closer, I could see that Mom was there too, sitting flat on her bum with her legs open in a ‘V’. It was a hot day. She wore a hand sewn, mustard-yellow hair band tied with the ends dropping at the back. Her bell bottom jeans were pushed up around her knees and sweat darkened the back of her striped tank-top. Grandma’s sewing kit was at her side. Chin up and glasses low on her nose, it looked like she was examining something with great intent.
Seeing me, Dad raised his arm in the air giving a slight wave, palm open toward me—like he was magically drawing me in with his powers. Feeling the pull, my walk turned into a full sprint. Was the bike finished?
Out of breath, I stopped in the driveway just in front of them.
“What’s the hurry,” Dad said, grinning. The fender of the purple bike peeked from behind him. I looked down at Mom. She raised her shoulders, smiled and turned back to her project.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing around his side.
“That’s not for you.” Dad said, tilting his head and squinting his eyes in disapproval.
“It is!” I yelled and pushed him aside.
There it was. My new (to me) bike. A pristine, sparkling banana seat had been attached. The fenders gleamed of polished chrome. Dad added rainbow streamers to the hand grips and reflective cherry-on-a-stem stickers to the back. He recruited Mom, who had wrapped rainbow drinking straws around each one of the bikes wheel-spokes.
Mom hovered over the bikes basket. She had small sewing scissors between her lips and was attaching pink and yellow crochet flowers she had made to the front of a new rattan basket fixed to the handlebars. She took the scissors from her mouth and placed them into the sewing kit before standing up beside Dad.
“Mrs. Beasley will fit in here perfectly,” Mom said, grasping the edge of the white basket.
Suddenly I felt my life had changed. I was on the map of cool-bike-kids in the hood. And most notably Dad had done something for me that was just for me. Not something that was piggy-backed upon someone else’s gift, like rides on Dad’s new motor-bike or treats brought back from tropical holidays my parents took without me. I loved that bike, and with my best-doll, Mrs. Beasley in the basket, I felt proud and sure.
Shortly after this, never before and never after, Dad sat down with me while I was colouring at the kitchen nook. Hunched over my Holly Hobby activity book, I could feel his warm stare. I looked up at him and he smiled. I skootched over the bright-orange vinyl covered bench seating to make space for him.
He sat down, and without words he picked up a coloured pencil and began to shade in the opposite page to mine. There we sat, my Dad’s thick, callused millwright’s fingers, tenderly filling in the fine lines of the little fawn tucked at Holly’s feet. Me, dusty-rose tinting Holly’s cheeks just so.
I can’t say exactly what I felt that day, but it shone. Somehow our worlds came together in a way so deeply connective that it stirs emotion for me even today. The sensitive energy of this rugged and sometimes gruff man as he gently coiled himself into my world of rainbow-dreams and imagination made me feel special.
These events are what I wrote about in the Father’s Day essay contest. The story of my Dad at his best. The contest readers at Simpson Sears must have felt this too because I won the contest. I was the recipient of five hundred cold, hard Simpon-Sears dollars!
I bought a leather-elbowed, tweed-knit sweater for my Dad, and though it bears many holes and snags, it still inhabits a hanger in my parent’s closet. I bought Mom a new cotton, floor-length nighty. I fulfilled several pages of my dog-eared dreams, including a Barbie-Boing 747 airplane, (fold-up suitcase style) and a Barbie-Motor-home with Jeep towing capability. Most importantly, I wrote the best story. This feeling was invaluable, and I still chase it today.
That following September, I went into grade four at Betty Huff Elementary school. This was the newly built school around the corner from my house that replaced the trails where we used to pick wild blackberries and occupy twig-forts.
My newly appointed radical jeans and t-shirt wearing teacher, Mr. Cleary, would do things a little bit differently than any other teacher I’d had before him. He’d encourage outside-of-the-box thinking, sometimes making the grass field that lined the forest, or the forest itself, our classroom. For this, I’d bound out of bed each morning excited to go to school.
My summer contest-win had given me new confidence. This was something I hadn’t known. The uncertainty that held my words behind my tongue seemed to disappear. I wanted to shoot my hand up and answer every question asked, and oh, how I wanted him to pick me.
Mr. Cleary pulled me aside one day and said, “I think you have a knack for telling a good story, Leesa. Keep writing them down.” He said my name with such clarity, I wasn’t just another kid in my grade four/five split class, I was Leesa, and someone wanted to hear what I had to say.
Beaming, I cycled home that day, Mrs. Beasley in my basket and the wind at my back. I had some writing to do.