The Risky Mountain Baby

Two stocky adults and their lanky teenage daughter lay collapsed on the side of a mountain. They had reached the part of the bike path that became nearly vertical, and their creaky old rental bikes had finally given — one chain snapped, a fender had slipped off another and rolled back down the trail, and another had, somewhere along the way, lost an entire handlebar.

Here they were again. The lanky daughter, 16-year-old Laila, could not help but reflect on their long journey to these circumstances; They had taken the hardest way up the mountain, despite being complete mountain biking novices and despite Laila’s mother carrying the new baby strapped to her back; They had rented a cottage which was miraculously extremely far away from every one of their planned excursions that week; They had neglected to bring their own groceries and found that the cottage was empty of provisions and the nearest store by a radius of 10 miles carried little more than pre-packaged sandwiches and protein bars… Even the plane tickets, Laila recalled, had been chosen at a moment’s notice, their destination decided simply by first available option.

She called it impulsivity. Her parents called it spontaneity. Even limber and healthy and 16, Laila couldn’t escape the flooding feeling that she was too old for this running around. The places they had lain stuck and tired with broken vehicles and miles from shelter had been so many over the years. As for her parents, if they tired at all it did not show. Right now, as if to emphasize this thought, Laila heard large, light laughter break out across the path where her parents had landed after the bikes had surrendered. Laila, herself, lay panting, exasperated by some increasingly indiscernible combination of her own physical exhaustion and her parents’ unbroken spirit. She sighed and took another swig from her water bottle, puffing out her cheeks.

“Do you want a snack, honey?” Laila’s mother was reaching into her day pack, wiping tears of laughter from whatever it was that had been so funny. She pulled out a few protein bars from that nearest convenience store, two apples — one red, one green — and a flat and soggy-looking PB&J, cut pleasingly into triangle slices. Despite the dodgy options, one look at food made Laila suddenly painfully aware of her growling stomach. She reached for a peanut butter bar and the red apple. “Yes, thanks Mom.”

A few bites in, Laila’s eyes caught the sun behind the mountains — it was past noon now, soon it would start to set — and remembered her concerns — her mood had been only slightly lifted by the food. Mid-bite, she managed, “‘o, wha’ a’ we go’a do?” She swallowed hastily while her parents cackled, lovingly mocking the completely unintelligible noises coupled with Laila’s serious face, eyebrows knit in commitment to make herself understood. “Don’t choke now, Laila.” Said her father, laughing his high giggle. 

“What are we gonna do?” Laila finally breathed. “That’s what I said — You knew what I meant.”

“Well,” said her mother — she was breastfeeding the baby; she always had a knack for catching her children right when they got hungry before they got whiny — “It seems a shame not to finish when we came all the way here.” She did indeed look mournful; Laila followed her gaze up the mountain, looking as if to see the end in sight. “But, I guess…” But she trailed off, tending to baby Sebastian.

Laila’s father, watching the trail ahead and then his wife with a dour expression of his own, removed the dapper and in-style, yet peeling, sun hat he had got in that same convenience store, and ran a hand through his hair. Laila, chugging from her water bottle in one hand and dangling an apple core from the other, watched the unfamiliar sight of her parents' faces falling. They never gave up, no matter how ridiculous their plans, no matter how completely reckless their original decisions had been. She supposed, however, they hadn’t had her brother all those times before — Laila had begun traveling with them immediately when she could walk, but not a moment earlier. Her brother in the bjorn was breaking records being here — surpassing, Laila thought amusedly, all her achievements in the young adventurers’ category. Laila glanced again up the path, with a hand raised to shield her face. She narrowed her eyes a moment, and then shrugged decidedly.

“How ‘bout we get to the top.” She faced her parents, hands on her hips with confidence. “Not the full path, mind you, not with this…” She lifted her father’s bike up by the remaining handle bar. “But just to the peak here,” she jabbed a thumb up the incline, “and then we can come back down… we can coast?” She raised her eyebrows, looking back and forth at her parents for a better idea, perhaps? She just found shocked faces there. Laila did not make reckless decisions — she didn’t make decisions at all. Often, as her parents might tease, she merely bemoaned her parents’ decisions. To this, Laila would retort that they decided too quickly — no research, no preparation, no assurance whatever it was was safe, and always getting to the next thing late, having got caught without gas, got lost in the woods, or been busy admiring a pretty street or a birds’ nest. Besides, the absurd fixes in which her parents got them three (well, now four) didn’t usually allow for many logical options and most of Laila’s careful skills of deliberation were rendered obsolete.

Despite the opinions of people too unfamiliar with their family and too ready with thoughts and projections of their own that this doubtful attitude was just Laila’s defiant teenage phase, those who knew — not the least Laila herself — understood that Laila had never had a defiant teenage phase and that she desperately loved her parents. It was one of those rare circumstances where it was not a matter of faults or mood swings between parents and child, but simply disagreement, and almost professional as if they were coworkers. Besides, as those knowing people knew, Laila’s parents were a bit crazy. They could have inspired the phrase “they threw caution to the winds.” In fact, on several occasions it applied in more ways than one — one might recall the week they had gone windsurfing out of cell phone range, or bungee jumping instructor-less. Lovely, lovely people, said those who knew. But insane.

So, in this historic moment of familial harmony, Laila caught everyone by surprise. Her mother’s eyes watered and her father grinned proudly as if they were watching their daughter accept her college diploma or come down the aisle in a wedding dress: their daughter had suggested, not that they go home, but they continue. They wouldn’t finish the trail, no, but compromise — an uncommon phenomenon in that household when it came to adventure, whether they were hanging off a cliff with one hand or two — seemed suddenly possible as their eldest child, lanky but no longer waddling, led the way up the mountain. 

Just a mile and a bit later, the family made a postcard picture standing to face the lowering sun. Things were soft and peaceful against the purpling sky. Careful not to tarnish the moment, Laila forced herself to be as discreet as possible while checking the time constantly to make sure they weren’t going to be coasting down the rocky trail on broken bikes in the dark. Calm never lasted long in that family, however, and the next twenty minutes on the summit passed hectically, filled with picture taking, off-key singing, and fighting over the last bits of water split across the three bottles. Then it was time to go.

Another fifteen minutes later, they actually began their descent. Laila shook her head, adjusting the wristband on her watch. She was still herself — her out-of-character suggestion had been but a rare and fleeting impulse — and if she didn’t play her part, keeping everyone in line, they surely would not have lived to land themselves in this mess. Like herding cats, is what it was.

—————

The angelic episode at the summit left them as they turned down the path. The coasting was a bad idea. It was beginning to get dark. The road was steep. The bikes were trash. Laila shook angrily; the bumpy trail served to personify her frustration at her own sheer illogical whimsy! And once again, her pensiveness was disturbed by peals of laughter; Behind her, her parents were along for the joyride, focusing, she knew, on anything but the danger of their situation. They’d get to the bottom somehow!, she knew they were thinking.

And get there they did. Scuffed, dehydrated, and bleeding. Aside from their general state of disarray, Laila had a bruised elbow, her father had a light gash on his calf, and her mother had lost another fingernail — the first was from scuba diving. Baby Sebastian was unscathed — Laila had seen the first look of anything resembling fear on her mother’s face when her bike had hit the fender she had lost earlier and she rolled off sideways onto her back clutching Sebastian in his bjorn with her arms formed like a cage, looking impervious, strong, and taught. Seconds later, she was laughing, but, in that split second, Laila knew just how much Sebastian was going to change things for them. Her new brother, she realized, had come to take some of the burden off her back. Laila didn’t dislike these trips — well, she hadn’t really ever had time to decide how she felt about them. But all these years of running wild with her parents had, for her, meant issuing warnings and safety inspections. But that responsibility, or the brunt of it, she thought, would now be past — Laila’s strenuous efforts, sometimes in vain, replaced (and far more successfully) by a sleeping baby.

“Come here,” she took Sebastian from the bjorn, and watched her mother, with a smile for each of her children, turn to join her father in gathering all the bike pieces to drag inside the lodge at the base of the mountain. 

“You’re a genius,” Laila whispered, tickling her brother under the chin. Sebastian smiled wide without teeth, giggled, and spit up.