My Life on the Road​

“The purpose of ass-kicking is not that your ass gets kicked at the right time or for the right reason,” she often explained. “It’s to keep your ass sensitive.”

Among his regulars were girls from a local Catholic school who rode around with the boyfriends they weren’t supposed to have, a Black Muslim father of five whose wife wouldn’t let him listen to sinful music, two male firefighters who rode home together after work in the most famously homophobic agency in the city, a single mother who needed time away from her job and kids, and an elderly unmarried couple who held hands where their children and grandchildren couldn’t see them.
“Only food and water are more important than music and privacy,” he says seriously. “I’m a rescuer.”

It’s said that the biggest determinant of our lives is whether we see the world as welcoming or hostile. Each becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Melville once said that every path leads to the sea, the source of all life. That conveys the fatefulness of it—but not the joy.

After all, hope is a form of planning

See that purple Harley out there—the big gorgeous one? That’s mine. I used to ride behind my husband, and never took the road on my own. Then after the kids were grown, I put my foot down. It was hard, but we finally got to be partners. Now he says he likes it better this way. He doesn’t have to worry about his bike breaking down or getting a heart attack and totaling us both. I even put ‘Ms.’ on my license plate—and you should see my grandkids’ faces when Grandma rides up on her purple Harley!”
On my own again, I look out at the barren sand and tortured rocks of the Badlands, stretching for miles. I’ve walked there, and I know that, close up, the barren sand reveals layers of pale rose and beige and cream, and the rocks turn out to have intricate womblike openings. Even in the distant cliffs, caves of rescue appear.
What seems to be one thing from a distance is very different close up.
I tell you this story because it’s the kind of lesson that can be learned only on the road. And also because I’ve come to believe that, inside, each of us has a purple motorcycle.
We have only to discover it—and ride.