As I wait patiently for Steve on the cement pier overlooking downtown Chicago, my mind wanders to the ups and downs of our relationship. I’m happy to say it was love at first sight. And I feel lucky that we’ve explored new frontiers together.
Of course, we’ve suffered bouts of estrangement and a period of separation that I thought would never end. But here we are fishing for salmon off Montrose Harbor. It’s now already 8 in the morning and we’ve caught a nice 10 pounder and thrown back several blue gill.
Admittedly, our relationship is somewhat unique because I’m a Radio Flyer. For you younger people and you girls who grew up playing with dolls, that makes me top of the line in red wagons. Not bragging. Just saying.
Now it’s time for me to take over, to bring our precious cargo home along with three poles and all the tackle and lures. I’m hoping that Steve can pick up the pace a little bit since liquid something is starting to pool all over my bottom and that smell ain’t pretty.
But it’s a small price to pay if it means being together.
Steve and I first met on his fourth birthday. His dad rolled me out from behind the couch and said simply, “It’s yours.” Steve let out a yip then ran over to give me a rather awkward hug. I didn’t mind his fumbling embrace because, quite frankly, hugging a wagon isn’t easy.
Then, Steve slowly leaned back on his knees and took on a quizzical but happy look that seemed to say,
“I’m not sure what to do with this but it sure looks cool!”
Steve’s dad scooped him up, plopped him into my carriage and pulled us out the back door and into the back yard for the first of many rides that we would share together.
As Steve got older, he graduated from pullee to puller and started taking us on ever-expanding excursions: first down to the end of the driveway, then to the corner and back (Mom, hands on hips, watching us nervously from the front yard.)
All this was, of course, great field training for the Big One: Around the block by ourselves!
Our Day of Reckoning finally came and off we went, thrilled but increasingly wary as we pushed deeper into unfamiliar territory. You can’t imagine our surprise and relief when our front yard finally came into view. As we turned up the driveway, I could hear my wheels change cadence from tentative to triumphant.
When Steve entered junior high, then high school, we saw less and less of each other. He started hanging out with boys at school and later girls who I’m pretty sure weren’t hungering for a peek of his little red wagon.
It was a lonely time for me. I was relegated to the back corner of a two-car garage that barely had room for one car. It was the Home of the Discards, the broken toys, the tools that no longer worked, the “easy to install” instruction manuals that had been hurled into our abyss in frustration.
There I sat year after year, wedged in next to the smelly paint cans with the color of their contents displayed on their sides by big goopy glops forever suspended in time.
For a while, I began to feel that I, too, was frozen in time. That this was it. I’ve had my fun. And now I’m done.
Then a day came when I heard Steve’s voice. He was grabbing armloads of stuff and throwing it aside as if he were looking for something. Finally, he lifted up the torn, stained tarp that had been unceremoniously dumped on me at the end of fall clean up last year.
Steve smiled and said quietly, “Here you are. Let’s go fishing.”