Rounding a corner, and driving down a narrow street in the Mission, I see a black plastic bag tumbling slowly. It assume the shape of a prehistoric bird about to lift off, as I pass.
Picking up kids for choir practice; an early-morning ritual. By noon, a return trip to pick up my youngest son, who stayed home sick with the flu.
Hours later, back again, for pickups of the other two, and dog-walking duties.
Then, tonight, after dinner and a few hours of TV, back again so they can sleep at their Mom's before another school day tomorrow.
Yesterday, on the bus going downtown, a black woman in the back is talking loudly to no one in particular. There's a certain narrative to her babble, one picked up on by a black man in the front, wearing raggedy clothes and a perpetual smile.
He understands her code. "Waitin' in line at the drug store. That be taking your ID, yep."
An Asian man got on and swiped his card but the sensor beeped three times, meaning it was invalid. "You gotta do that again, sir," said the bus driver. "It has to beep once."
He gets up, swipes the card again with the same result and sits down.
"Again," said the driver. The man appears to barely understand English, but he gets up again, tried again, with the same invalid result.
Then he sits down again, apparently not comprehending, or perhaps not caring to comprehend what the driver is telling him.
The driver shrugs and gives up.
My youngest son, now the principal dog-walker, is sad that one of the dogs has aged and no longer has the energy she had even just a few months back. She has trouble climbing the stairs to her house, taking one step at a time, ever more slowly.
He mourns her loss of energy, the sense of her life slipping away.
His sadness is a daily event, as the younger dog still has plenty of energy and wants to run freely while the older dog seeks only more and more chances to rest.
"They're pulling me in two different directions," he complains to me.
Life and death. The daily struggle facing us all. We're all somewhere along that spectrum, on the upswing or the down. It may be sad, in many ways, but it is also life's natural cycle.
Caring about animals can help a young person deal with far harder experiences yet to come...as well as for as-yet unrealized joys
My granddaughter started crawling yesterday.
Driving back tonight, in the darkness, a yellow cat passed just before my car; he was never in danger, I was driving slowly.
The temperature is falling; it's winter.
-30-
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