Before I tell you about my trip to the secret Scientology compound, I need to post these small thoughts on the ending of a long year, of a cycle. Thanks for listening.
Birds sing after a storm, why shouldn't we?
Yesterday morning I walked to the town library as the sun cut crystals through dry clouds. I carried my sons' science fiction books, watched them ricochet bike tires against cold pavement, send pine needle missiles and red dirt bombs back toward me. This year, the end of it, is like those spinning wheels, and everything I said I'd do, it just got lost, slept right through the dawn, sprayed against some forgotten curb. Time is not an arrow, I thought. I am still a bike kid, a pine weave rascal, a traveler of streetsides and tumble down timewaves. I am an eight-year-old bike kid during some spring sunrise I still remember, and as my boys attempted wheelies along the edges of the parking lot, I dropped their books on a bench and pulled memory over my eyes.
I taught myself to ride a real two-wheel bike that morning, grabbed banana bars, ran six steps, hiked leg over seat and sailed toward Cold Spring School in a red plaid Catholic girl skirt and Mary Janes. I passed a lopsided lilac hedge, my knuckles white and rigid in fear and concentration and skittled, oh fell-splayed-jettisoned-crashed-hard-skid-fast against shoulder gravel, some wino's whiskey bottle carved into my leg. It didn't stop me. I grabbed my bike's bars, hauled butt over bar, let my body turn rotation into rhythm into three victory laps, until I slid side once more against cement, my skirt ripped in two places.
I hid behind a couch, my side pressed against lumpy avocado chenille, one eye peering around the corner, the other staring at my left thigh, at a mirror image of zigzag broken glass, at the angry redness spreading across my skin. I didn't know it would last thirty-two years, last a lifetime, be a flag of surrender. My mom sat, her back pressed into the fabric just two feet from my knee, her eyes glued to a man on television, a crusty power man, the neck of his shirt beading with sweat, and balding head so close to the camera I could see lights reflect off his forehead. He told the world he would take the blame for something I didn't understand, something called Watergate. My mom called him bad names out loud. I didn't want her to see my frayed hem.
I shook out of my trance, my boys still racing the future, and realized the air smelled different. I breathed as deep as I could, filled lungs with cinnamon and freedom and musty books and lilac. This year is a wheel, like every year, like every thought I stir like batter. This year is a ride on a banana seat bike, all torn pants and exhilaration and bloody scars. This year is a hiding girl, is the grief of resignation, is the anger of unjust actions. This year is the purple of lilac, the secrets hiding behind a lopsided hedge, the laughing call of two boys who haven't met time. Time is not an arrow, it's a spinning wheel connecting past and present, spraying memory and dirt, all echo, all gravel goodbye, pine-scented hello.
Let the world spin.
9:59:42 PM 
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