Having been accused on a number of occasions of being a hopeless romantic, I'd prefer to re-categorize myself as someone who notices details, remembers details, and ascribes meaning to the details of ordinary life as I live it with those I love.
Thus today, for the first time in a while, I started teaching a new student how to drive a car. The car we used was my car, which may not have been the wisest choice, given how its clutch responded to the workout.
Back down to Illinois Street, a relatively quiet patch of the city east of the old Dogpatch neighborhood, through a narrow industrial strip lining San Francisco Bay, we drove, as my 16-year-old practiced shifting gears, turning corners, and navigating his way through light traffic.
It may be that there is nothing intuitive about learning to drive; I'm not sure, but finding the way to simultaneously lift your foot off of the clutch while depressing the accelerator is a skill that takes practice.
He stalled out a number of times in a row before I realized he was pressing down on the brake, as opposed to the accelerator when trying to take off. My bad -- I forgot to show him clearly that there are three pedals in a standard transmission car, not two as in the one other car he has driven to date.
Not being in a particularly nostalgic mood today, I didn't linger on memories of my last driving student -- plus there is a certain level of terror involved in being a driving instructor. so this isn't one of the experiences I have been looking forward to repeating, presumably three more times at least before everyone I'm responsible for can make their own way safely through traffic.
Besides, it's a marvelous spring weather that has descended on our city, sweeping in feelings of rebirth and change, as opposed to the backward-focus of winter, all cold and lonely.
I've always loved spring and here it can start very early, as my appointment calendar indicates, since today is apparently the 17th of January, two months before the season officially changes.
Still, for one flickering moment down on Illinois Street, I admit that my mind took me backwards in time. All of us may come and go, but the physical layout of the city largely remains intact. If it could talk, it would play our tales back to us, but it cannot, so that is left to our story-tellers.
People who notice details, remember details, and ascribe meaning to them as part of keeping our stories alive.
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