Life Sketches by Terry Berkson

Not Far from the Tree…

I’ve been thinking a lot about my daughter Elizabeth lately—mainly in connection with bicycles. I’ve always had a thing for the bicycle and the freedom it offered me as a kid in Brooklyn which, for the most part, is as flat as Holland.

Up here in Richfield on the hill, it’s easy to leave and hard to peddle back but worth the effort. In the city, riding was a breeze and a three-speed touring bike was all you needed to get around. In recent years I grew to appreciate that it was good exercise, and with the absence of a motor, a silent, easy peddle down Ocean Parkway was almost like flying. Naturally I wanted to pass on my love of riding to my kids, so I bought my daughter a little two-wheeler for her fourth birthday and, to my delight, she mastered it almost immediately. Later, her brother Jonathan would inherit the bike with a crossbar installed.

On the Christmas of her tenth year, I went to Sears and bought Elizabeth a full size, 26-inch, candy-apple red touring bike and stood it under the tree. As a family, we had already done a lot of riding and I thought she’d be delighted to get a full-size bike like Alice’s. To my chagrin, she was disappointed because it wasn’t a 10-speed with one of those minimal seats and raked handle bars.

“I want a bike like Shari’s across the street,” Elizabeth complained.

“Does she know how to shift it?” I asked.

I’d always see people having trouble with the chains and sprockets on those bikes.

“No,” my daughter admitted.

“Then she only has a one-speed and you have three,” I reasoned.

“A three-speed’s for old people,” Liz countered.

At my insistence, we went for several outings—not without a lot of complaints. After a while, Liz stopped riding altogether. I held to my guns knowing that, in Brooklyn, a mountain bike or a 10-speed was overkill, a kind of fad. In my mind, the world was being taken over by gimmicks and gadgetry. Just to tune into a radio station in our “new” car now required studying the owner’s manual. The candy-apple red Raleigh remained in the basement for several years, gathering dust.

Eventually, Elizabeth got her 10-speed as a gift from a sympathetic boyfriend. Occasionally we’d go for a ride together. Ironically, she struggled with the gears and complained that the seat wasn’t comfortable. In that stage of her life she never conceded on many matters upon which we disagreed.

For a long time we didn’t seem to like each other. Once, while we were living in temporary quarters during the transition to Richfield Springs, Liz accompanied me to the post office in Coney Island where I was mailing out a manuscript. In Brooklyn, you can’t enter a store and leave your bike outside and expect it to be there when you get back, so I left my daughter standing on the sidewalk with the bikes. Minutes later, from the postal line, I looked out the window to see a man push the bikes off the sidewalk, making them crash into the gutter as Liz stood by in shock. Then the man, while yelling that bikes are not supposed to be on the sidewalk, began to push Liz toward the curb. Instinctively, I left the line, went outside and swift-kicked the man in the butt! Twice! A hefty Black woman who was getting out of her car and had seen the whole thing declared, “Right on, brother!” as the attacker, stripped of his dignity, walked away rubbing his rump.

“Dad, the bikes are okay!” Liz said to me when she saw how excited I was, but of course it wasn’t the bikes I was concerned about. I couldn’t believe how protective I felt for this kid with whom I was always knocking heads.

Years before, in high school, Liz told me about something that had occurred in her art class. The teacher had given an assignment. They were supposed to draw something and then scribe a theme below the picture. She couldn’t think of anything to draw and just kept looking out the window or watching what a boy in the next row was doing.

“He was as busy as a beaver and suggested I get to work,” Liz said.

Toward the end of the period, with only minutes to spare, she thought of a song we used to sing in the car on trips. That was before there were iPods and headphones. Liz drew a palm tree with several coconuts lying on the ground below. Then she subtitled the drawing “I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts!”

The teacher loved it and gave her an A. The kid in the next row, who was working hard for the whole session, looked at Liz’s mark incredulously while holding a B in his hand. Liz had had an eleventh hour stroke of creativity.

Now, 20 Christmases later, my daughter lives with her husband Jay in Pinehurst, North Carolina. When they were about to move down there, I went to the basement to dig out the red Raleigh but, sadly, it was gone, probably given away some time when I wasn’t around. The terrain in Pinehurst is mostly flat, like in Brooklyn, and they often go bike riding. My daughter calls us at the drop of a hat on yet another gadget, the cell phone. Even I have abandoned the typewriter for a temperamental computer. Today, in the eleventh hour of hope for a simpler world, my daughter called me with what amounted to my first Christmas gift. It made my mind bend an adage that a good friend once quoted to me in regard to my children: “The coconut doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Liz was out riding with her husband and just called to say, “Dad, I just love my old three-speed!”

Terry Berkson’s articles have appeared in “New York” magazine, “Automobile” magazine and many others. His memoir, “Corvette Odyssey,” has received many good reviews: “highly recommended with broad appeal,” says “Library Journal.”