January 21, 2025

When I was seven, I had a kid-sized chromium bike with blue accents. My parents bought it from Walmart, and in my seven-year-old world, it was the coolest thing ever. After school in our suburban San Jose neighborhood—where pavement cracks looked like faded kisses and house numbers on the curbs were washed out by time—I found joy in play. After school, my brother and I would take our bikes and feel the roll of tires over uneven concrete, cruising along sidewalks bordered by unmowed lawns. Occasionally, we’d get honks from frustrated drivers when we veered into the street. We rode with the neighborhood kids, daring ourselves to lift our hands off the handlebars, our arms outstretched, mimicking wings as they caught the wind. When our mom called us home for dinner, her silhouette framed by the yellow glow of the kitchen light against the darkening sky, we carelessly draped our bikes against the concrete of the front porch, their wheels still spinning in the air. Under the vast California sky, we explored what it meant to move freely.

I think, as I grew up, I forgot what it means to play.

At twenty-eight, I biked a handful of centuries with the Seattle cycling community. During the sweltering summer heat, when temperatures soared into the nineties, I pedaled across endless stretches of gray asphalt, the sun pressing its heat into my neck, back, and legs. Droplets of sweat trailed behind me like breadcrumbs over bridges that spanned miles and miles of lake. My calves hardened in ways I hadn’t known before; my skin deepened to a bronze etched with the hours spent under open skies. I trained, rain or shine, to become better.

I documented my achievements—my pace, my hill climbs—on Strava, each ride a digital monument to the miles I conquered. On my fridge, marathon bibs hang with magnets: some streaked with dried mud from backcountry trails, others soft and worn, edges curled from flapping wildly in headwinds on rapid descents.

But when I look at them now, I’m not sure how I feel.

At the end of last year, during those dreary late fall months when the sun dipped below the horizon by five, I had top surgery. For three months afterward, I was more sedentary than I’d ever been. At most, during recovery, my partner and I took slow evening strolls along a brightly lit gravel path to the nearby town center. Her corgi pranced ahead, nose buried in every tuft of grass, as we treated ourselves to sweets. We gave in to the dormancy of the sleepy season and found shelter in a town that stood still with us.

In recovery, I felt my body change in ways I wasn’t used to.

My legs softened. My belly rounded after hearty meals crowned with dessert. The denim of my jeans left faint creases along my lower stomach. For three months, my partner and I languished on our sagging gray couch, laughing between mouthfuls of popcorn and mint chocolate chip ice cream. I listened to my body’s quiet needs as it healed.

In the office space of our apartment, my bikes leaned delicately against the white walls. Their tires slowly deflated, top tubes and handlebars collecting thin films of dust. In some overly sentimental way, it felt as though my shame for my changing body grew in tandem with the dust settling over those forgotten frames.

But today, after a three-month hiatus, the bikes and I moved again. It was a rare sunny day in late January. The air was crisp, frost lined the bridges, and my partner and I decided to meet friends for a ride along the Sammamish River Trail. We rode at a fraction of the pace I once held, filling the air with conversations and full-bodied laughter as we drifted leisurely along the lake’s edge. The tails of my partner’s black jacket swayed in the wind, and the blue of the sky brushed against thin clouds. It felt euphoric.

Still—my legs struggled to remember the motions. On hills I once tackled with ease, my huffing and puffing felt frantic, and even on flat stretches of trail, my pedals groaned and creaked with each downstroke.

When we got home, I took off my helmet, looked at my partner dejectedly, and muttered, “I must be so out of shape.” She crossed her arms, tilted her head slightly, and asked, “What does it mean to be the right shape?”

I imagine my seven-year-old self looking up at me. Her black bobbed hair falls neatly at her shoulders, her wire-rimmed glasses perched delicately on her nose. Her cheeks are tinted a pale rose, like she’s just come inside from playing in the cool air. She’s holding that silver and blue bike with one hand, the chain streaked with orange-brown rust. With the other, she laces her small fingers into my palm. Her gaze is tender and curious, as though she’s waiting for me to explain something I’ve forgotten.

I wonder, now, what it means to be the right shape—or if that question even matters. I wonder what it means to live in a body that moves not out of obligation, but out of joy.

She squeezes my hand gently, as if to say, You already know.

And maybe, I think, it’s not too late for me to remember.

Maybe next time, I’ll go out for a bike ride and stretch my arms into the sky, too.