The winter sun hangs low on the banks of the river as I walk with my girls, seven and three. We nearly run into an eight-year-old boy peddling a unicycle with such ease he looks almost bored. Kaitlyn, the seven-year-old, grins, spots a stack of unicycles on the grass, and makes a run for them.
A young man introduces himself: Ashley. He has sandy blond hair, a lithe body and an ease and grace with the kids. The lessons are free, but my daughter doesn't wait to for this explanation; she's already picked up a unicycle.
'You need a helmet first,' Ashley explains, and I tap my daughter's arm and sign, Helmet.
'Does she read lips?' he asks.
'If you could just look at her when you're talking,' I say.
'Okay,' he says with the slightest trepidation. 'She's d-d-deaf and I have a stutter.'
But he doesn't stutter when he speaks to my deaf daughter. Or if he does, she doesn't notice. The three-year-old pulls at my leg and I give her some crackers.
Something about this young man's unassuming manner reminds me of my brother, who used to ride a six-foot unicycle through the Georgia heat, juggling. I sometimes see the ghost of him in my daughter: that appetite for adventure, the intense keenness that was the death of him — what we loved and feared about him most.
Kaitlyn can't stop smiling as she holds Ashley's hand; half a peddle, stop, half a peddle, stop. She falls off and gets back up again. She keeps practicing while Ashley moves to help another girl, who's waiting, her mother in a Sari on this unusually warm August day.
Then a pretty young woman with hair cut short like a boy hops on and rides off straight away. 'You're a natural,' Ashley says, a beat before she falls. They laugh. He helps her on again.
I have a go, hoping I'll be a natural, too. I'm not. I feel like a child until my three-year-old walks in front of the wheel and I have to get off and go back to being Mum.
Two blokes with big tattoos and bigger muscles come by and give it a try. They hold onto the fence and pedal and swear; they can't balance. Ashley tries to help, but they finish his sentences before he can get them out of his mouth and then they give up. 'Too hard,' they say.
There are others — they keep