She mounted her tricycle, and pressed the pedals forward fearlessly tackling the dangerously steep driveway. She maintained a rocketing speed (for a tricycle anyway) of five miles an hour all the way along her journey. She passed the Smith’s house with their unkempt fitzers, and the preacher’s house with all his sons’ cars scattered willy-nilly on blocks. She didn’t look up to see if anyone stared at her from the house where nobody seemed to live and she pedaled to the corner house where the other girl her age lived but she’d never met.
Steam came from her breath as she turned the front wheel over again and again and again and she ignored the aches growing in her thighs.
Now came the decision she would forever remember as the defining moment of her childhood. She stopped. She looked both ways. She calculated the consequences one more time. And then she crossed the street. Kerblump, kerwhumpf over the concrete gutter and across the asphalt expanse to the other gutter. Kerwhumpf, kerblump.
She made it.
She pedaled onward further and further down the half-lengthed block and when she reached the next corner she crossed that street with a little easier conscience. Another half-block and another corner. She crossed over that third suburban street almost guilt free. Now she could see her destination.
The park with the tennis courts, the picnic tables, the barbeque pit, and the rusty playground equipment. She raced along the fencing and pulled her mighty three-wheeled Radio Flyer into the picnic table area. She dismounted and raced wildly, running through the swings, and the rocking duck and pig, and the little slide, and the big slide. She ran through the metal tables, behind the tennis courts where the sticker bushes grew, and out to the big tree alone in the middle of the park.
She screamed with joy.
They were still there.
She grabbed them, scrambled back to the tricycle, and forced her way along the return path. The route went slightly uphill this time and her speed slowed and fatigue began its merciless assault on her enthusiasm. Yet she pedaled. And pedaled. And pedaled. Until only the daunting driveway stood between her and home. She hopped off, pushed the tricycle the remaining yards with her legs wiggling and her mind reeling. She parked her red contraption and snuck into the kitchen from the inside garage door.
Her mother walked into the kitchen her arms raised with a damp towel and her long hair doing a mid-air dance. She was freshly showered with a distracted look on her face.
“Why are you breathing so hard,” her mother asked. “Where were you?”
“Out in the garage,” the girl said, knowing it was mostly true.
“Well get your coat on; we have to go. And don’t forget your mittens. You haven’t lost them have you?”
The girl looked down at her grassy crocheted prizes from the park. She smiled. “No mom, I haven’t lost my mittens.”
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