Ann Wilberton, whose poem “Meeting the Pleasure Cruiser” appears in Volume 72.1, writes about a sleek black cruiser, resilience, and the hope that fuels tinkering in a behind-the-scenes essay.
I survived an accident. I like the shorthand of Vespa versus Mitsubishi Galant, style versus four-door sedan, but the slightly longer version is that on a beautiful July day, a man drove into my path and we collided. It is easy to survive an accident and only see the subtractions, all the things lost to injury or fear or both. A silver-flaked helmet, painted by my father, saved me. He painted it to match the silver glitter-vinyl seat on my vintage scooter. That Vespa and the scooter culture I had immersed myself in gave me joy and community. We’d gather and ride through Minneapolis and St Paul together, a buzzing hive, two-stroke, blue smoke trailing behind us. That was the first subtraction, a decision based on calculating risk. I would not ride again. Brain injury is cumulative and I can’t risk another blow to my head. It was just one of the subtractions.
Seventeen years later, I still navigate issues from the accident. All the damaged places are filled with arthritis and in the case of my dominant hand, disintegrating. I’m an optimist. I don’t like to pause and spend too much time pondering the losses, but that is what I’d been doing in my writing. I wrote poem after poem about loss, the accident and its aftermath, my mother’s dementia, and the pandemic. I was tired, slogging through the reliving, the worry, and the sadness. Meeting the Pleasure Cruiser came out of assigning myself the task of writing about joy.
After I wrote the first draft and read it, I realized that it is a poem about resiliency and the legacy of problem solving, tinkering, and making that I carry from my family. It was not unusual to go into the backyard and find my father and a group of men standing in front of a car with its hood up. I learned a lot about sharing a problem, looking at it from different angles and trying different solutions. I didn’t witness a competition about who was right; I witnessed collaboration. Meeting the Pleasure Cruiser is about the hope that fuels tinkering. Hope is a hammer, a chisel, a screwdriver, a one more try.
I had a problem. I wanted to spend the summer riding my bike with my schoolteacher wife. She needed to recover from pandemic teaching and we live half a block from the most beautiful bike path in Rhode Island. All my tinkering and experimenting didn’t get me in a riding position that took the weight off my hands. The other problem, which is slightly embarrassing to admit, is that I’m not sure I was willing to ride a bike I considered horribly uncool. I grew up with muscle cars in the driveway and family outings to drag races and demolition derbies. I owned vintage vespas and cars. I didn’t want an ugly suburban bike with no character. If that was the only option, I’d like to think I would have done it, but I didn’t have to because I found the Pleasure Cruiser, a matte black Electra cruiser that has epic swagger.
The joy of riding a bike on a summer morning, my wife’s stress carried away on a salty breeze, carried over to my desk when I began writing. It gave me the opportunity to take the time and reflect on my experience. I’m doing okay and I will continue to do okay. I will always look for the tweak that makes my life easier or less painful. I know that I will face more subtractions, more decisions that will take activities from me and that will be okay too. There is a difference between recovery and resilience. I’ve recovered from my accident. There will be no more gains. Meeting the Pleasure Cruiser is an ode to my resilience and I take comfort in that because I have more than survived, with a little tinkering and one more try, I have thrived.