There are many good things that I have found as a Mum have been the result of my being a Tom-Boy when I was younger. For one, I am pretty damn good at sports....any sports but especially cricket and footy and my son is not at all embarassed to kick a ball in public with me ;) . Another is that I love riding bikes still. But there was more than just a bike in my past..I also used to ride roller skates (which I didn't keep) and a skateboard (which I did keep) .
When I was growing up I spent a lot of time with athletes who were paralympians. My mother is an Amputee and was a professional athlete when I was very young, so I got to know many other amputee athletes. Around the olympic swimming pool many of the people that I would play with and hang out with when older were double or single leg amputees...how would you get around the edges of the pool to your starting blocks? why on a skateboard of course. I loved their skateboards. They were so insanely cool and I never felt prouder than the moments when I was entrusted to watch their boards while they raced...and when they taught me too how to ride them.
I rememeber begging and begging my parents to buy me a skateboard just like my friends...but we didn't have much money and any large items like a skateboard had to wait until birthdays or christmas. Finally though i was given a skateboard. It wasn't quite like my friends. It was a little more narrow and it was pine coloured with grips...unlike their white, wide boards which were covered in their own cool stickers. But that skateboard meant the world to me. I would spend hours and hours out the front of my house going up and down the foot path, turning into the driveway and and riding back out again. I loved that board and thanks to the hoarding genes passed down to me from my Dad I never got rid of that board.
My children discovered it a few years ago, but it was too hard to ride and so it kept on getting put away. Until this week. K decided, Monday night that he would get that skateboard out and try it out. I stood and watched him and he asked me to show him how to use it. I tried to stand on it and wobbled off instantly. Thoughts of breaking my bones and ending up in hospital flashed through my mind. 'Perhaps I am too old?' I thought. So I sat down again and just watched him for a while, thinking that my time had passed...skateboarding is not for me. Then, I felt propelled to try once more. So waiting for K to take a break I placed my foot on the board once more and pushed off. I fell off...but landed standing on my feet. Suddenly I felt alive! I got back on...within 10 minutes I was skating back and forth across the driveway. We worked together then, as the old skills came back to me I was able to tell him how to move his weight on this feet to make the board turn. He was able to ride it, by himself by the end of the night.
My boy K, he spends most of his life running around on his tippy toes, walking on the ball of his feet, barely ever putting the full weight of his body on his feet as he races through life. It is an Aspie thing..it is a K thing. On a skateboard though, K is FORCED to put his whole weight on his feet in order to steadily ride. It was a learning curve at first and an action that he has to remind himself to perform each and every time he gets on the board. But it only serves to make him feel even more proud of himself when he is sailing along the concrete on my board...I mean his.
Because tomorrow he has decided that he is going to ride 'his' skateboard to school! He cannot wait to show his friends his, 'like a penny board, real skateboard!' . I cannot wait to see him make the trip from the local sports fields car park along the walking/riding path to school.
Gosh could I be anymore proud of him? I think not...although there are always new days and new skills to achieve.... :)
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