I was the first of my siblings to bike. I remember running down one morning on my birthday (ages ago) and being so excited to find a little red bike with training wheels parked outside our front door. Of all the childhood presents, this is the one I remember the clearest; and the childish exhilaration in which I adored this bike. I remember hours of paddling its tiny wheels amidst flights of delicious fancy; most often of which my bike was my loving horse taking me on myriad adventures.
And when my dad took off the training wheels, I remember falling and falling. I remember circling our yard, images of grass spinning all around me. I would ride this bike around all the time, by myself, until after many falls I could stand on it and ride without hands and confidently swerve and speed around the yard. Such a simple memory but with so much significance, and even today I replay in my mind my happiness at finding a bike on my birthday morning. And what I would give right now to be my father at that exact point in our lives, observing me and all the antics I went through before finally speeding everywhere on that little red bike.
The next time I want to ride a bike is on a beachfront, where I will bike faster and faster as fast as I can go, with the wind rushing in my hair and drowning my ears till I can no longer tell time and place and space. And I will remember the little girl who taught me how to ride.
I remember the exact moment I knew I wanted to play the piano. It was while reading an Enid Blyton book about The Naughtiest Girl Elizabeth when she played a piece that sounded something like the storm and the seas and then the calm that followed. And I remember wondering at how one could feel things, could experience emotion and imagery and euphoria through playing an instrument. And that was when I went to my aunt's discarded old organ and began pounding out whatever music I could make, driven and enthused by a tantalizing thought that if I mastered enough, I too could began to see stories and make stories through music.
When another aunt gave away a piano, I was ecstatic, and began to take lessons on my new-old piano, a black upright. My father allowed these lessons because I was genuinely interested in pursuing the music and eventually he bought me a beautiful rosewood Yamaha that I love for its unique, quaint elegance. Years and years of "do re mi fa so" and scales and arpeggios and repetitive, childish pieces gradually blossomed into pieces of increasing sophistication and grace.
And then the moments came. Writing has endowed upon me some of the best euphoric moments of my life, and so has playing the piano. It is pure magic to be surrounded by music and living it, almost levitating singuarly to its powers, both mastering and being mastered by the sound. It is almost, a haunting. It is then that I began to start to understand how some can live and die in the quest for capturing the perfect tune -- an alluring siren song that takes captive with no resolution.
What simple memories stand out in your mind? Which firsts do you fondly cherish?
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