Two things changed my life: my mother and a white, plastic, daisy bike basket. I have thought long and hard about it and it’s true. I would be a different person if my mom hadn’t turned a silly bicycle accessory into a life lesson I carry with me today. 

I was eight years old back in 1973, when bikes had banana seats, streamers blowing in the warm air, playing cards fixed to the wheels so the flap-flap-flapping of them hitting each spoke would sound to us like motor bikes. Helmets were unheard of. Parents didn’t need to watch you when you rode down traffic-free streets. Bicycles were everything in my leafy, affluent town, a stone’s throw from New York City, where my father worked. My mother stayed at home to raise me and my two brothers — most of the mothers I knew did the same. You get the picture. For our purposes here, it was summertime in New England. Life didn’t get much better. 

Those were the days of "go play outside" and "don’t be a tattle-tale, I don’t care who did what to whom," or "I’m sorry you’re bored but I’m not here to entertain you." Back then, in summer, it was normal to leave the house in the morning and stay out until dinnertime. Our mothers let us be kids. Trophies were only awarded to winners, parents didn’t always say please when they told you to do something and if you were told to share you shared — not because ultimatums were issued but because parents had the last say. They didn’t negotiate. They didn’t plead. They said. We didn’t have factory-made elaborate fortresses with thick, wood beams and trolleys; we had homemade forts tucked anywhere parents couldn’t easily reach. Forts were where we ate dirt on dares. Where we told secrets and where attacks were planned. We didn’t have fragrant wood chips under our metal swing sets; we had patches of earth kicked bare by legs pumping to get higher and higher.

Mothers were burdened with the same things they are now, but back then it seemed less of a chore than a given. I should add that this is a presumption filtered through young eyes. That was what life looked like in my childhood.

But things were a little different in my town, consistently voted one of the richest in the country. We’re talking rich. Though homes were indeed mansions, wealth was not paraded around town — it was considered gauche by an older set. There were well-worn station wagons and kids got to "play dates" not by hummer or minivan but by — you guessed it — bicycle or calling around to see who could give them rides, because mothers were busy running households and getting things ready for when fathers trudged home from their high-powered jobs in The City. In the mid-’70s through to the ’80s, there was a boom in our town population as more and more families were moving out of the city, children and fistfuls of cash in tow. They were dazzled by good schools, beautiful, old, rambling homes and stretches of land they could now afford. So school was filled with show-offs whose parents were new to money and thought they needed to earn their place in town by flaunting their bank accounts.