My favourite day of the week has always been Thursday. The Thursdays I like best are the ones where my bed feels like home when I wake up, but it gives me the keys to move out. Whispered ruffles in the duvet say “Go and live your day, and come back when you need us.” Pillow marks embedded on my cheeks say “We will go soon, do not deepen us. We are not tattoos. Leave, and live.” On those Thursdays, I’ve noticed it is often sunny and cold. The wind argues playfully with the sun, and I look up, half expecting to see three pulses in the sky, before a stone gets covered with paper and the sun wins out. On those rare Thursdays, the weather moves like child’s play.

Yesterday, a Thursday just like this one, where my eyes looked ahead, and my chest was armoured red with garlands of indestructible poppies, I walked. Steps were hard, and scary, and new, but London put her arms around me. She was like a lover on whom I could count every beauty spot, but I didn’t know yet what she was like when she lost her temper. London was like a lover I knew better than anything, but didn’t know at all. I spoke quietly to myself.

“There’s a first time for everything,” I said, over and over again, shaking so much I could barely feel each finger from the others. “There’s a first time for everything,” I said, with each step, feeling the city’s hand in mine. “There’s a first time for everything,” I said, as I looked up to see the wind winning against the sun, for once.

I breathed more peacefully by the time I got to the park but my heart still beat… beat… beat… beat… beat. The steps had become more than just acquaintances and so, easier to take. They were opening up to me, telling me that it was safe for me to let them live too. The steps weren’t friends yet, but I was taking my independence by the reins, and I, at least, knew their names.

The twinge in my hip was waking up by the time I got to the bench that looked like mine. Maybe, if I had been 16 and if I had had a boy wearing a beanie hat and black-and-white striped wristbands next to me, I would have carved my name into the wood of the bench, using the penknife in my pocket. I would have kissed him, deep and hard, and I would have re-christened the knife with the wooden splinters of victory, rather than with the shaved off specks of my innocence. If I’d had the boy with the beanie, my 16 year old heart would have taken his hat off, and put it on, and twirled, shouting “I DID IT!” so loudly that the sun and the wind would stop playing to join me. Had I been sixteen, I would have kissed my boy in the beanie, and my name would still be on that bench. Yesterday though, I simply sat and wondered how many people had beaten their fears with an axe, before sitting on this bench, wishing they could carve their names in the wood.

Leaves tumbled along the park paths in front of me. They tumbled as quickly as my heart had been beating a few minutes earlier, and as quickly as the months were changing towards Christmas. Everything happened so fast, but my mind was slow as the steps had been. I don’t know how long it took for them to arrive, but soon, the air was filled with conversation, with a moment, with a way to bring time back to where it was meant to be.

“Are we gonna try today, buddy? Are you gonna conquer it today? If Superman can fly, then we can do this, huh, little man?”

“It’s Thursday, a Thursday for big things! Any Thursday where Daddy has the day off work is a day for big things!”

Humans have a painfully usual way of relating things back to themselves, and I suppose that’s what made me look up when the man some distance in front of me said that. Buddy, as he was to be called in my head, looked up at his father, with the same kind of unease we all have when we look at huge, magnificent statues. The grown man stood awkwardly, with more weight on the left side than the right, to hold Buddy’s hand, and hold a child’s bike in the other. A bike with training wheels still on the back.

Buddy nodded his head, first slowly, and then with more determination. “Big things Daddy!” he said simply. I was just close enough to notice his lip quivering. Willing London to let go of my hand, and take Buddy’s, I hoped. I hoped that he would return to his home with a triumphant smile on his face, and have someone to show it to. I hoped that he would succeed, and then ride a bike every Thursday for the rest of his life. I hoped for this little boy I didn’t know, just like I’d hoped for so many years that, one day, I’d be able to walk to a park on my own.

“Ready, bud? I’m gonna take them off before you get on, and then I’ll be right here, holding your hand. Right here, yeah?”

And that’s what happened. I looked up from my uncarved bench, and the bike looked naked and vulnerable, and the little boy’s eyes were big and brown and about to grow up. I thought of my bed, giving me the keys to move out on this day, and I realised that although it would be many years until this boy’s daddy would let the metal clang against the kitchen counter, he was giving him keys too, just of a different kind.

“If you win this round, I’ll let go, and we’ll see how you do? Okay? I’ll be right behind. Ready? 1,2,3…”

Buddy covered rock with paper, and he won. The grown man let go, and stayed right behind. I couldn’t stop looking. I gave him all my garlands of poppies, and all my strength, and willed him to ride. I didn’t know this kid, and I willed him to ride.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, he rode. 6, 7, 8. I cried. Quietly, I said, “No more training wheels for you, buddy.” The lopsided grown man was straight now, and clapping. He had the same smile as his son.

But, quicker than this all happened, a sound came.

“OOOOOOW! Daaaaaaaaa—aaaaaddy. OWWWW!”

I realised I’d looked down for a second, in my pride for an unknown. The gravel on the path had taken refuge in the little boy’s hand, and his skin was the same colour as his hair, all too red. Bile rose up in my throat because this is why we need training wheels. Because Thursday is not enough. Just because nature was playing a kid’s game in my head, and that made me manage. It. Is. Not. Enough. I kept my head down, and cried for Buddy, for me, for independence. I cried for one-offs, and coincidences, and flukes. A black taxi cab driver asked me if I was okay on the way home, and I didn’t say anything. He kept talking as I sat in the back, but I only heard one of the sentences he said: “I thought it was a bit of a short ride for a taxi, but then I saw the crutches, and since I was right there… You alright love?”

***

Today, Friday, the pillow creases were deep when I woke up. My bed was unwelcoming but magnetic, in the nastiest of ways. London was angry and had slammed the door in my face because, as it turned out, she was a viper when she was unhappy. It took every reserve I had to fight the whirlpool I was drowning in, but, a few infinities later, I was sat in another black cab, silent as rage this time. And, six minutes after that, I was sat on my bench, still uncarved, empty, bitterly laughing at flukes, because I hadn’t done it on my own.

Too many hours went past, but too little time, and I knew they weren’t coming today. There were hieroglyphics propped up in my lap which were meant to be English, and my hip hurt. Still. The silence was choking me, and I tapped too hard against the bench to fill it. The taste of the word fuck and the taste of vomit, and the taste of unfairness, filled my throat, no matter how much I coughed.

And then, they were here. The lanky, full grown father was in a suit, and shook his shoulders backwards as if to shake the monotony of every word from the work day, and remind himself that it was never too late for the important things. For the Big Things. He turned to Buddy, who had sleepily excited eyes.

“Daddy! It’s so late that there’s a star! Am I allowed to still be awake?”

The man of many roles – the breadwinner, the father, and the boy that father used to be – knelt down to his son’s level as I watched, and held a finger to his lips.

“Don’t tell Ma, but we’re gonna try again. Because Friday, well, Friday’s a pretty good day too little one.”

I couldn’t do this again. I had no idea why I’d waited so long in the hope they would turn up, because now, the idea of a repetition of yesterday felt worse than how I felt when the boy in the beanie told me he “had better things to do”. I walked, with angry determination this time, away from my bench, away from Buddy and his father. I faced up to nothing but the opposite direction.

I walked furiously. I didn’t stop. At first, I thought what I was hearing was the rhythm of my shoes on the violent paths full of gravel, taking unwelcome residence in skin. Too loud. Too much. I walked a couple more steps. I realised. My shoes were silent. The gravel wasn’t noisy enough to travel up the length of me. And so it was, that I knew.

Two hands were clapping a little boy. A little boy with hair too red. Two hands were clapping for Big Things. For Big Days.

They didn’t stop clapping, and when they did it was to say “Third time lucky, buddy, third time lucky. Want a round of Rock-Paper-Scissors? I’ll buy you an ice cream on the way home if you win.”

He won. His training wheels came off and he won. I’ll never know his real name, and he’ll never know mine, but I walked home tonight, on my own, and he’s the reason why.

Why do bikes need training wheels? So they can be taken off.

About Vix Jensen

Vix Jensen is a 21 year old Masters student in Psychology in London. She was born in Paris and has been writing from a young age, and spends every moment of her spare time putting pen to paper. She generally chooses to write creative non-fiction, or young adult fiction. She has written extensively on physical disability, suffering from one herself, but her writing also covers other, varied themes such as family, childhood, grief, and creativity. She is heavily influenced by young adult literature and authors, such as John Green and David Levithan, but is also inspired by the writings of Sylvia Plath, Charles Bukowski and Jonathan Safran-Foer. She has previously had pieces published in creative writing anthologies, and also, Cosmopolitan Magazine UK.

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