A Bike to Remember 2/13/2021

 Good Morning,

The scene outside our den window is cold and snowing. We have been blessed with a good amount of snow. I wish some of it would have been here for Christmas. The Christmas lights just weren't the same without snow.  But despite the weather outside, my cup of Door County Blueberry Cobbler Coffee has me warm on the inside.

1 John 3:18 Little children let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth.

I can't remember how old I was when my parents bought a new bike for me. Until then I either had a hand me down or a very used one to ride. My birthday is in February and in Wisconsin it is not weather for bike riding. My parents gave me a birthday card and in it was a note saying that the bike would be coming in the summer. I had pretty much given up on that bike and one hot day in July I came home from baseball practice to see a brand new bike sitting next to the porch. My parents came outside and were so proud to have given me a new bike. The bike was made by Mattel which was odd for them. I don't recall them ever making another model. 

Photo credit Worthpoint .com

I took the bike for a ride. It was ahead of it's time. It was kind of the first version of off road bikes. I rode that bike everywhere and had it until the wheels were ready to fall off.  Many years later I figured out the rest of the story. The bike didn't come home in February because my parents just did not have the money to purchase one. By July my dad had picked up a couple of side jobs painting houses and there was extra money for the bike. I think about it now and I realize what my dad did to get his son a new bike. Hot days painting these two tall houses and then going to his regular job. 

Dad wasn't one to tell you he loved you. I believe I only heard that two or three times in my life. But you just knew he loved you. He sacrificed sweat and energy to to give a bike to his kid. 

Dad is gone now and today I miss him. I can still feel the wind blowing on my face as I came down the hill on 35th street, riding with no hands and at times keeping up with the cars. 

Here's my point for the day. If you don't hear those three little words, watch and see love in action. A parent that goes to work and then takes time to help you draw a map of Italy and build salt clay mountain ranges until midnight, says more about love than those three little words.

God bless,

Marty