The 3-speed green bicycle had both tires flat. I moved it away from the garage wall. A rusted kick-stand scraped as I forced airless rubber tires to turn. I squeezed the handbrakes.

Years ago, my daughter whizzed from the garage, down the circular driveway, and pedaled along the New York State Barge Canal park just a mile away. She carried books in metal newsboy-baskets that added weight to the bicycle’s rear tire. Her return always had bulrushes, or wildflowers, or even long-stemmed green weeds as a gift for me. I'd take these floral clumps and carefully place them in a crystal vase which I first filled with water stained by squirting a drop of food coloring inside. If a flower was a white lacy one, the food coloring traveled up the stem and eventually tinted the petals.

Ten-speeds and lightweight frames were "in" but she always preferred to be different. This bike was sturdy, had fewer parts needing attention, and provided transportation. I'd watch her thin blond hair take on fullness as she pushed against air; it waved behind her like a flag. Peds-socks, with fluffy pom poms on each heel, covered her feet and peeked out above the canvas sneaker.

I imagined her humming, talking to birds or trees, reciting poetry aloud as she pumped to whatever was a favorite spot to read without being interrupted to do a household chore. Did she daydream while the boats on Lock #32 were caged below water level? Did she wave to people waiting for the lock to let them exit? Did she like the freedom her spoked wheels brought? What were her secret yearnings, fears?

My balloon-tired bicycle gave me independence. Growing up in Flushing, Long Island, before exurbia or expressways, I pedaled to a swamp now called Kennedy Airport. My favorite place, however, was along Long Island Sound as I had to walk the bike up a flight of stairs, walk over a bridge of the Cross Island roadway, then bump the bike down a full flight of stairs until I reached the path parallel to the road. Water lined one side; cars on concrete traveled the other; my bicycle below me moved quite protected in-between. My mother only knew I was "out," and "out" was anywhere I had the endurance to go. In order to brake, I had to back-pedal and I felt that only I, alone, knew how much pressure to apply when going downhill on the hilly streets of the North Shore.

With a new camera that took tiny 2 ½ x 2 ½ inch snapshots, I caught a patrol boat in waters of Bayside, and if I rode in the opposite direction I took black and whites of tiny La Guardia Airport adjacent to Flushing Bay.

What did my daughter decide to capture and keep when her Kodak was toted? Did ducks waddle on the narrow canal? Did she, too, merely go "out" wherever her endurance took her? Years passed, earning two university degrees, marriage, having two children: my garage still contained her transportation of independence – rusted, with silvery rims that topped each tire plus the wrapped cords of the hand brakes that had turned tacky from deterioration. This last tangible proof of childhood needed no permission to give away, yet I pushed the phone-number digits, heard my daughter's "hello" and saw, in my mind, clumps of hand-picked flowers stuffed in steel bicycle baskets.

In her garage, 500 miles from here, are two bicycles that once meant independence for her offspring. What might she see when the time comes to donate such to charity? What did these children bring to her after their own personal adventures on two wheels? Does she still see clumps of wildflowers that she brought me?

A tangible piece of metal and rubber linked my girlhood to my daughter’s to my grandchildren from her body. Yet the unseen, the beauty of Nature, maturing, caring for others, and the privilege of life, continues to spring out as the weeds that once appeared to be flowers that fluttered in her metal newsboy bicycle basket.

Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & soft-cover book anthologies. Collections of her personal items/photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including 12 different divisions of The Smithsonian.