The past few days, seeing this city through the eyes of my friend, as she visited here for only the second time in her life, San Francisco reminded me why I love it. That may sound strange -- loving a city -- and often my feelings have been more ambiguous about the experience of living here for so long.
I don't expect to live here forever, any more than I expect to live forever, but for a while longer this will be my home base.
This is a birthday week, always a time of mixed emotions. It was nice, and a bit strange, to have a woman on my arm again; it feels as if it has been a long time that I've gone everywhere alone.
Downtown life, from a small hotel; breakfast at Sears; dinner in North Beach; a walk in the park, including the arboretum and tea at the museum cafe.
It was a chance to go to places I used to like, and start to like them again, free of unpleasant associations.
But hovering over everything this week is the tragic loss of the young man who made so many visits to my apartment over the years, playing games and watching movies with my sons.
The grief counselors are meeting with the kids tonight; a little memorial has been set up at the school they all shared for nine years; next Sunday a family memorial event will take place.
When a child takes his own life, it casts a long shadow over many of the values all of us hold dear. We have to believe in the future, in some sort of future, in order to be parents; we have to find ways to hold onto hope in dark moments.
Most of us know how it feels to lose love, to lose jobs, to lose friends. Most of us understand the pain that betrayals inflict.
Everybody hurts sometime. Everybody hurts. Hold on.
-30-
1 comment:
It is always great to share a place with love with others. As for the last part of the post- I totally understand what you are saying.
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