Bi(Cycles) by Burcu Seyben
When I was a kid, my parents rented a small apartment. Other low-income families, like us, were there, too. Vacations by the sea; I think we stayed for a month or so. I don’t really remember if I liked it. There was this one vacation, though, I remember. Got a bad cut; my foot slipped off the pedal. The side vein of my foot, I cut it on the chain. Couldn’t go in the sea for the rest of the vacation. The cut was deep. Infection impending. Like a metaphor of my childhood.
I remember my mother telling me stories about a famous Yesilcam (Turkish Hollywood) actor who spent so much time on the beach that he had a heat stroke and died. She used these stories to deter me from going to the beach and accidentally dipping my feet into the water. The thought of an infected foot seemed more dangerous to her than to me. I went to the beach and lay by her. For the first time, I noticed how much older her body was compared to Dad’s—an age gap that felt infectious for the first time. The sun has a way of revealing things that have been kept secret.
*
I used to race bicycles with this guy from the summer village. Dad had a house by the sea. Upgraded our class, I guess. Became a reason for him to… excuse himself from us. He’d drop us off at the village, visit sometimes, then collect us at the end of the vacation.
I found a guy to race bicycles with. We went out to the highway when no one was watching. Racing with trucks. I wanted to outrun every truck, every man in my life. Cycling hard enough to catch up to my childhood.
The boy, pedaling me, had a gear bike. Showing me how to race, but it felt… unfair. Kindness? Maybe, teaching a lesson about bikes, about life. Bikes with gears, kids with families—they learned to be gentle. I hadn’t. It felt rude, his cheat. What I really meant? It’s unfair he’s so happy, so handsome. Me? I smelled like trouble, sweat dripping off my feet like blood did years ago.
*
Years later, Dad and I. Trying to go to a wedding? Or coming back. Took the highway. Same one. Where I’d raced bikes. Dad was impatient. Really impatient. Outraced every car. Suggested I pretend to be sick. If a cop stopped us. I’d taken acting classes without telling him. Now, I could use them. If I could lie to him. I could pull it off with the cops? Luckily, none stopped us.
After a while, the traffic got really stuck. Dad didn’t know what to do. He swerved into the emergency lane and even used the car like a truck, going down the asphalt and trying to fuse into the byway where my friend and I would ride our bicycles when we got tired of racing with the trucks.
Sometimes, childhood and adulthood, along with highways and byways, merge like that.
*
I never understood how bicycles are so much like human beings. They’re on wheels, you can drive on them. You think you can race with trucks of problems or maybe problematic trucks. Like life’s catastrophes. You aren’t immune to rain, cold, wind, not even the sun. You feel exposed, like you’re naked. Even your insides are out there. No matter how difficult it gets or how simple it is, with or without a gear, it’s your will and guts that really matter. The rest just rolls on, around, and with you.
*
When I was teaching my son to ride a bike on a closed road, it was a college campus in the U.S. He had a helmet and training wheels. I wanted to guide him—but… he was scared. Even with all the gear, he just wouldn’t try. After a few meters, he’d put his feet down.
I felt frustrated. Almost wanted to say, “You can’t learn to cycle without falling.” But then, unexpectedly, he… started practicing falling. Not really what I had expected. It was almost like he thought, maybe if I just… fall first. It’s funny because he still does that sometimes when things get complicated.
I wished my father had… taught me falling. Before riding. I guess he did… in real life.
*
So, we finally took the plunge and bought my son his very first two-wheel bike. It was from this quirky little shop near the Boise’s state capitol. A bright red bike with beige wheels—so cool, it practically had its own fan club. My son was buzzing with excitement and insisted he wanted to practice his riding skills right there in the parking lot.
The moment we stepped outside, my “mom alarm” went off like an old-fashioned fire drill. I glanced at the parked cars and suddenly they looked like wild beasts, just waiting for an opportunity to pounce. The fearless girl who had zipped around on highways was transformed into a nervous wreck, conjuring up “careful” warnings like a frog choir.
In a split second, my son hopped on his bike and took off. Somehow, he managed to dodge everything—no hits, no collisions, nothing. My husband was filming the whole thing. Meanwhile, I stood there, just staring and contemplating falling.
*
Falling and failing? They kinda go hand-in-hand. Let’s go back to my first bike accident, for instance. There I was, clutching the pedal like it was my lifeline, trying to avoid the inevitable tumble. I ended up with a glorious scar from a vein that decided it had had enough of my refusal to let go and hit the ground.
*
Does “scary” mean being covered in scars, or does it refer to something frightening?
*
I feel lost in a jumble of thoughts. Who is the real subject here? Does my approach to parenting truly matter? Then there’s this tension I feel—a struggle between falling and failing. It’s strange how they appear so alike from a distance. I’m myopic and always have a very blurry vision of the house on the optometrist’s machine.
Burcu Seyben is an asylee academic, playwright, director, and writer of creative non-fiction from Türkiye. Since 2017 Seyben has been rebuilding her life and writing in the US. Her creative non-fiction has appeared in The RavensPerch, Door is a Jar. Synkroniciti, and The Manifest Station literary magazines.
