Do you remember the day you learned to ride a bike? Did you wake up one morning and decide that the day to set your heart to the endeavor had arrived? The youngest member of our household did just that this week. One morning, Emma woke with the idea germinating in her precious little head. Within an hour, she went from a wobbling, barely balancing, unconfident, trembling mass of uncoordinated body parts to a sleek, smooth biking machine.

After whizzing up and down the driveway all afternoon, she came to me with perfectly sweet 6-year-old innocence and said with simple honesty, “Mom, learning to bike has really changed my life.”

Learning to operate a machine, and building the skills necessary to continue the effective and efficient operation of it, is something we can take for granted at times, I think. We learn to master certain equipment – the car, the tractor, the lawn mower – then we forget what life was like before we enjoyed the effect of using them.

There is one machine, however, to which I shall devote eternal reverence and never take for granted: the rototiller.

I don’t exactly know where our rototiller came from, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that one day I saw it sitting in the garage and decided the time had come to run the machine. I was 19, I think, and let’s just say that I had more muscle than brain.

I rolled the tiller out to the edge of the garden. I moved all the levers into what looked to be the proper places, choked the thing and pulled the start cord. The tiller roared to life, spouting a bit of black smoke, then running with a smooth hum.

“Not bad,” I thought. “No trouble at all.”

I pushed a lever forward and the tiller thrust into action. It chugged through the smooth, loamy soil. It churned up beautiful, brown earth in its wake. Life was perfect. I was in control. In just a few short moments, I had mastered the machine completely.

Just as my brain began to entertain the notion that I could till all day, turning the world into one luscious, chocolatey-brown garden bed, it happened: The rear tines latched onto a stone, locked up and heaved the tiller sideways. I was attached to the tiller, of course, and was jolted sideways and back again with the violently bucking handlebars.

This scene repeated itself over and over. The tiller lulled me into a trusting posture, working the beautiful earth with its powerful tines, chugging along and emitting gorgeous, finely mixed, workable soil. Then, without warning, it would violently thrust me aside like a cork on the high seas.

Determined that the machine wouldn’t get the best of me, I finished tilling the garden. As far as I could tell, my arms were still attached within their sockets. From my elbows to my fingertips, numbness prevailed as a result of the constant vibration from the tiller. The region between my elbows and shoulders felt like hamburger, but appeared, upon inspection, to remain attached to the rest of my worn body.

“This thing is a beast,” I said to my dad when I returned the rototiller to the garage.

“That thing’s a man-killer,” he said, shaking his head.

“Hmm,” I thought. Most likely, it didn’t discriminate: It was a woman-killer, too.

Now I’m 33 and have proportionately more brain than muscle, as compared to when I was 19. That said, I still find myself operating the same tiller. But it’s different, you see – now I use it out of necessity rather than egomaniacal curiosity.

And at least I know what I’m getting into. I psyche myself up properly before even thinking about touching the machine. Yes, I project confidence at all cost. I work up a suitable level of mental courage and I approach the rototiller with the same trepidation and excitement I imagine a rodeo rider has approaching a bull.

As far as the tiller knows, I’m in charge. I give it a final stern talking-to before I push those levers into place. “Buck and heave all you want,” I say, “but I have the power to leave you out in the rain to rust, ol’ boy.”

What the tiller doesn’t know is that in my head I’m also repeating a meek mantra over and over: “Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”

And so, as spring takes shape, you’ll find Emma buzzing up and down the driveway, basking in the newfound and unbounded freedom brought into her life by the miraculous machinery taking the form of a bike. You’ll find me in the field adjacent to the driveway, enslaved to the dastardly rototiller, glad that the roar of the equipment masks my insulting verbalizations from Emma’s dear, sweet, innocent ears.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, 512 North Ridge Road, Montville 04941, or e-mail dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.