I grew up with three brothers and no sisters, finding girls largely incomprehensible. Even my wife, whom I have loved for twenty years now, always seemed a tiny bit alien in some fundamental way. When we had three daughters and no sons, at first a part of me yearned for a son to play ball with, to take camping, or to see the Mets at Shea. But my daughters finally showed me how spiritual and intellectual kinship can transcend the limitations of gender.
My wife and I had almost despaired of our oldest child’s ever learning to ride a bicycle. She was clumsy and frightened, but what she lacked in balance she made up for with a determination I had to struggle to match. For long hours, over the course of several weeks, I would run alongside her, shouting encouragement while she pedaled briefly before the inevitable crash.
At last came the day when she didn’t fall, but wobbled on ahead. “I’ve got it!” she shouted, ecstatic. At once she doubled her speed and raced ahead, far faster than I could run. She never looked back, her tiny legs pumping up and down as the bike tilted from side to side. As she disappeared down the bike path, a part of my life rolled away with her. Now she could go by herself to the ice-cream store, to a friend’s house, to . . . a future without me. Someday, I thought, boys would admire her as she pedaled past on her bicycle. They would see in her a reflection of their own yearnings, but nothing of her essence, nothing of the weeks of struggle that put her on that bike. In that moment, as I felt my age yielding to her youth, I identified far more with her than with the men who might someday gaze at her. For the first time in my life I was more than a man. I was simply human.
Nathaniel S. Borenstein
Morristown, New Jersey