Unpacking

Twelve is my favorite number. I've always liked even numbers, but 12 in particular because I wore it on my sunflower yellow and royal blue jersey the year my Little League team won the championship. In my memory, the number was assigned randomly when uniforms were handed out by the Team Mother.

I am thinking this morning about 12 because that's how many years it's been since I finished graduate school and wrote these words in the final essay of my master's thesis:

"I took on a challenge to my mind and body, but carried also a vague sense that I wanted a life that was more than work, old faithful friends, various sadnesses, my one comfortable grocery store and safe little condo, and my favorite Mexican restaurant where the menu hadn't changed in sixteen years. I wanted a life not so enclosed, not so selfish. I wanted a quiet, but big life." 

It is easy as a writer to dislike sentences, paragraphs, whole essays once they are published. For me, I often dismiss or dislike what I've written so that I stop myself from even attempting to publish. But that one sentence, of which a part is now the title of this blog, felt right the moment it tumbled from my mind, through my fingers and the keyboard, onto the page. It comes in the penultimate paragraph of an essay in which I attempt to describe a week I spent riding my bicycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a massive event called the California AIDS Ride. But more than that, I set out to write about meeting an HIV positive rider who in facing death forced me to face life. Her name was Dana.

"I fixed my gaze on Dana's left foot and thought of nothing but the perfect circle she was drawing with each stroke of the pedals. It was our fifth consecutive day on our road bikes, and easily the fifth hill of the morning. Sporty Acuras, one-ton Fords, and Winnebagos whipped past on the left, leaving in their wake the vibrating roar of rubber and pistons. My legs moved more hesitantly than Dana's, the quad muscles pushing and pulling against the friction of the tires. When I made the mistake of raising my head to peek at the road, the four-lane asphalt highway with its generously proportioned shoulders arced menacingly to the left and out of sight. The top of the hill was higher than I could crane my neck to see and hidden beyond the curve. 

If Dana had had a sparkler taped to the heel of her chocolate brown shoe, the streaming light would have formed a chain of zeros floating behind her like the tail of a kite. Such grace seemed unimaginable on a climb shrouded by drenching heat and car exhaust. There were other riders on the hill, at least fifty, and most of us sat heavy on our seats, swaying from side to side in a lumbering effort to yank ourselves to the summit. In the belly of the curve, Dana and I slid to the left to pass one, two, three, four riders. She shouted the obligatory signal; I followed with a warning puffed more than spoken. 'On ... your ... left.' I kept up with her, powered by the fear I'd stop completely if I fell more than three feet off her back wheel." 

Some readers will remember that I had another blog a few years ago. I used to also write a column for The Spokesman-Review. But mostly, I have not been much of a writer since graduating with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Some readers will also know I have been forced to face life in the past year in a way never planned or wished for. 

I am drawn again to a quiet, but big life because it's time for me to finally unpack what I meant by those words 12 years ago.