Back from a 2.5 hour commute getting the boys to their sleepover out in Marin. Fog drapes over this city; now I get to relax a bit and watch the Giants game, which is an extra-inning affair back in Cincinnati.
Lunch here and there all over the city with the boys this week -- Noe Valley, the Mission, the Haight -- as we ate Thai, American, and Chinese.
Meanwhile, an everyday mid-day pickup of three 12-year-old girls at the rock-climbing facility near my house. Yesterday, I brought along somebody special from my daughter's past -- our friend J, visiting from New Orleans.
My youngest remembers how this friend helped her gain confidence as a beginning reader back when she was in first grade and having trouble. J bought her several books that were perfect for a kid at that stage of development, and it worked.
Ever since, she has been a big reader and a very good student as well.
My kids all are a lot like me in one respect. None of us ever forgets the key details of the people who enter our lives, even long after they leave us. We remember -- and appreciate -- what they add into this big robust family of ours.
J looks great. Long-time, early readers will recall the seminal role my relationship with her played in the origin of this blog. In many ways, she has turned out to be the most constant, truthful and caring friend anyone could have had these past seven years.
As I write these words, the Giants remain locked in one of those strange extra-inning baseball games that only true fans can appreciate. It's like a soccer game or a hockey game in sudden-death overtime.
Stressful but somehow, for the true athlete and the true fan, quite satisfying indeed, no matter how it turns out. Just like relationships; they're never completely over until they are over, and in a just world, not even then, because they never do really end, they just move into what we call the sweetness of memory.
The place where stories get told.
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