What is the origin of the term? I know there are variations, like a baker’s dozen, but what about this grouping of twelve? It is not random. There are, after all, that number of cycles of the moon in a year, and if we look at a clock, or a watch face, or even think about how we express time, then this system is also based on twelve. Such a methodology with twelve as a base is called a duodecimal system.
The English word comes from the French douzaine, meaning a grouping of twelve. And the baker’s dozen, well it turns out in England there was a requirement when selling certain goods by the dozen that they equal a specified weight or average, and failure to comply resulted in a fine. Thus, the workaround was to include an extra item. However, the Oxford English Dictionary offers a different explanation, with the extra loaf of bread representing a retailer’s profit for every purchase of a dozen. In the end, I suppose, either reason works, that is they are reasonable explanations.
Of course, I had other reasons to be thinking of the number twelve, for that was a very special night, the eve of New Year’s Eve, December 30, 2012. How many moments in time are there when you can think to yourself, I will remember this exact moment forever? Not many. A wedding night can certainly be a blur, and it was for sure, but very clearly, I recall stepping out of the chaos, the great whirl of the moment, and into the back room just to let the occasion sink in. I took a sip of champagne, a few deep breaths, and then I went back out into the madness, that rare circumstance where my wife and I were at the center of everything. We were the kind of people who preferred the attention to be on others, but that night, there was no escaping. We were the stars, and how we shone, how beautiful she was in that formal dress, her eyes sparkling, body so vibrant, so alive, so happy, the very light in which my spirit is born.
Looking back, how young we were, and how much has changed since then, be it jobs or pets, and even friends, the people we knew then who were enough of a part of our lives that we wanted more than anything to have them at our special event, and some like an omen, perhaps, are no longer here. And some of it is death, inevitably, though in other cases, they might have been there and yet not there, and that precursor, not noticed at the time, is even more apparent now.
I shouldn’t dwell on the past because I make meanings and draw conclusions, come to realizations that may be nothing at all. Let it go. That’s advice we give others, but do not follow ourselves. I don’t know why it is like that. Perhaps I am prone to think too much. As it is, I purposely set aside moments in the day to do nothing but think. It is my morning walk, coffee in hand, the picturesque canal and the charms of its half-light colors. It is the afternoon, too, sitting on a couch by the window, looking out to the world and imagining so many things, or so little. It is the evening, a mixed drink, often now fresh limes and Topo Chico, and the preparation of a meal, the vegetables cut and bowled. And it is night, late at night, after I have read a few short poems (John Ashbery currently, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror) and passages from a few books (Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters and Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia), when I lay my head to sleep that I think some more, starting with something I am working on, writing, but that soon trails off and it becomes something else because being is always in the process of becoming.
Tonight, tonight it is our evening meal, our celebration of twelve years married, that fine dinner at that place in Georgetown with its grilled meats and falafel and Spanish-tinged Middle Eastern faire, our hopes and dreams, our future, the many more shows we will go to (LA, Jeff Tweedy at Largo in a few days), the places we will travel (Australia in the Spring), all the new things we will experience. A dozen may be a grouping of things, but as years it is no mere thing, and as life, it is truly a wonder.