My son bought a dirt bike last week.
This statement has triggered a few raised eyebrows among people I’ve told, along with pointed comments like, “I hope you know a good surgeon.” The answer, unfortunately, is yes, because my brother had surgery on his ankle after a minor dirt bike accident several years ago. (Sigh.) Anyway, here we are.
My son became fixated on the idea of owning a dirt bike more than a year ago, and since then it’s been pretty much the only thing he talks about. He concocted all sorts of illogical plans for getting one, until settling on the most obvious solution, which was to get a job, work hard, and save enough money to buy one.
So, as soon as school ended in June, he relocated to Muskoka, Ontario’s cottage country, to live with my parents and work in my family’s wood-fired pizzeria. He took every shift he could get, and within four weeks, had saved enough money to buy a small used 125cc bike. Last week, his grandpa drove him to the Honda dealership in Barrie to pick up his bike. (Apparently, he “quivered with excitement” the whole way.) Since then, the sound of its revving engine and tires crunching on gravel has become the soundtrack of our days.
He is over the moon. He hauls us outside, one by one, to admire the bike. “Feel how warm the engine still is,” he told me, placing my hand on its sleek side. I was worried I’d get burned, but he assured me I wouldn’t. “Look at the colour. It’s called racing red. Isn’t it beautiful?” Then we regarded the suspension (excellent), and the knobby tire tread (grippy), and the large exhaust pipe (shiny). I tried my hardest to swoon adequately over this purchase that fills me with mixed emotions.
I spent 10 years as an environmental journalist, working for a website called Treehugger, so I’m not exactly pro-dirt bike. Would I prefer him to be on a mountain bike? Of course. But he has one, and he’s ridden it for years, and now he wants this, too. I do appreciate the fact that his dirt bike, despite being a noisy gas-burning machine, will take him deep down the logging roads and old trails of the northern forests that I grew up in and love more than anywhere else on earth. I desperately want my sons to develop a love for the woods, and if this is the conduit for fuelling his enthusiasm and attachment, then so be it.
I also recognize that he worked hard for this, harder than I ever thought he would. In fact, I didn’t think he would do it! I expected him to come home after a week or two, and say that working in the pizzeria wasn’t for him. But instead, he impressed all of us with his sheer determination and stick-to-it-iveness—this kid who used to complain about taking out the recycling. It goes to show the power of having a personal goal, and how, when a person wants something badly enough, they’ll put themselves through significant hardship to achieve it. In doing so, he managed to teach himself a life lesson that I’ve been trying to instill in him for years.
Admittedly, the bike makes me highly nervous. I am afraid he’ll get lost, that he’ll crash and break his leg and not be able to walk out, that he might run out of gas when he’s 20 kilometers deep in the bush and it’s getting dark, that he might encounter an angry bull moose or a black bear (or a malicious human). He doesn’t have a phone. All these fears lurk in the back of my mind, but I push them away because I cannot tether him to me with fear. I mean, I could, but then he would grow up to resent me.
What I can do instead is equip him with practical skills (always carry water, matches, a knife, a compass) and sensible warnings (don’t go fast, wear protective gear, remember your route so you can backtrack). I encourage him to listen to his grandpa and uncles, who are experienced riders. I trust that his cautious, sensible nature will prevail. Then I have to let him go and trust that he’ll be fine. He’s itching to go, after all, and I do want him to be out there, exploring the real world, not cowering at home and seeking thrills online.
It is not easy to relinquish control. I am a fairly strict parent who’s always had a clear idea of how I want my children to act, but this feels like new territory as they get older, a balancing act between maintaining my behavioural standards and giving them the space to become the unique individuals that they are, with radically different interests from mine.
The night before I left my parents’ house, my son came back from yet another dirt bike ride, this time pulling a yogurt container filled with tiny, sweet raspberries out of his backpack. He was so excited. “I found a huge raspberry patch along the old highway! And there were places where I could tell bears had crushed the bushes, so I made lots of noise to make sure they were gone. I can go back for more tomorrow.” We whipped some cream to mix with the raspberries and savoured the taste of peak summer—which we wouldn’t have been able to do, if it hadn’t been for a bold boy and his dirt bike, who was still going slowly enough to stop and notice the raspberries.
I am excited to announce that my next book, Hold the Phone: How Parents Can Rescue Their Kids From Too Much Screen Time, will be out in November, and it’s already available for preorder from Amazon. Preorders are a great way for the book industry to gauge interest in a title and to generate some hype, so please, if you’re intending to buy my book, consider ordering it in advance!
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