Smell of Summer

Yesterday was a particularly warm day; fortuitous on the first day of Maggie's spring break. We rode our bikes up to Bethel for convo and then around town for awhile. It was quite a trek for a girl who wouldn't get on her bike a few months ago just for the fear of falling.

I don't have very many positive childhood memories, but one came rushing back to me as I watched Maggie yesterday. At one point, we went over a small, steep, stone bridge in North Newton. Maggie thought it was so much fun that she begged me to let her go back and do it again. As I stood and watched her fly back over the bridge, all smiles and laughter, with the sun on my face and the smell of my own bike tires, budding trees and asphalt in my nose, I recalled the childhood freedom that went along with biking. I remembered speeding down the sidewalk on those first warm days of spring and summer, not a care in the world, imagining that I was a hero on the way to rescue a beautiful woman in trouble. This was my favorite game to play, often to the strains of Bonnie Tyler's "I Need A Hero" playing in my head. I didn't bother to tone down the melodrama when I eventually reached dating age, either. :)

Good times.