My daughter never once corrected her 1st-grade teacher, who pronounced her name wrong the entire school year. She was so quiet, her teacher admitted to sometimes forgetting about her. While my daughter liked school and stayed engaged with the work, she preferred to go unnoticed, a little wallflower sitting cross-legged on the alphabet rug in the back of the room.
This worried me at the time. My daughter’s pint-sized demeanor seemed a far cry from the emboldened toddler who, with hair knotted and wild in diapers and bare toes, fearlessly grabbed our pet chickens with both hands and corralled them into her radio flyer wagon. She had zero reservations. More than once, we chased her down the block, shorts and T-shirt in hand, as she barreled through the neighborhood on her pink Strider Bike in Dora undies (with a helmet, because, safety). That pink, pedal-less Strider Bike was straddled between her chubby baby legs when she could barely walk. Maybe it was the speed with which she could travel or the stability it allowed her to tap in to, but that bike ignited her inner heroine. She and my son would ride their Strider Bikes, side by side, wearing superhero capes. Complete strangers would snap photos of them as they cruised through the park. Because she spent so much time on her little Strider, she transitioned to a pedal bike before she could correctly use a toilet. As an avid mountain biker, when I posted the video of her pedaling for the first time on Facebook, the caption read, “My daughter learned to ride a bike before she could poop in the toilet. Priorities. I couldn’t be more proud.” To which, one friend commented, “Nothing like a woman in charge of her life.” Her spirit was unabashed, and watching her brought me so much joy.