The fog was starting to roll in, and so I decided that it was time to pack my things and head home. Home was exactly 1.2 miles away from where I stood, at the very bottom of Pine Street. I looked up towards the top of the hill. The hill stretched long into the distance until I could no longer see past the top of it. Usually, the 1.2 miles took 2788 steps, but on particularly foggy days, my footsteps made quick and hasty work of the worn cracks in the sidewalk. The cracks collected scattered tree bark from the wind battered cypress trees all over San Francisco. I descended the hill every morning, when the fog still had not evaporated under the glare of the sun, and climbed back up in the evening when a whisper of windchill began to rouse up the leaves in the street. The hill was eternally long going up, but it became shorter each time I passed one of the distinct landmarks I had noted in my brain — the entrance to Chinatown on Grant St, the Pine and Jones Market, the coffee shop on Leavenworth. I often despised the hill, only to arrive at home slightly out of breath and with a creeping feeling of gratification.
Ever since I left Pine Street, though, I only remember loving the hill. Each footstep trodden was a memory made. The memories collected subtly, slowly, like the windblown dust on the sidewalk, until the time came to sweep them aside so that new memories could collect. The old memories were swept away, but never fully discarded.
The hill offered me no solace or comfort other than the fact that it provided a safe passage back home. In its everyday repetition I found a different type of home, which was forged by knowledge instead of comfort. Knowledge of the round bay window with books propped up against its uncurtained window, only five minutes down the hill from my house. Knowledge of the streets where the trolleys would pass through, ringing the bells on their cars which were filled to the brim with tourists who spoke all different kinds of languages. Knowledge of which alleys to avoid and which alleys offered shortcuts to the lower Bush Street and the upper California Street. Knowledge of how many crosswalks remained until I reached my destination at the end of Pine Street. Observation preceded knowledge, until repeated observation engrained the familiarity of Pine Street into my brain.
I don’t know if I’ll ever live on Pine Street again, but the hill remains my home as long as my knowledge of it still exists. I passed by here the other day. I remembered how the fog at 2 am muffled the sounds of the city into a standstill, and how the tall and solemn hospital across from my house would remain lighted for most of the night, and how the trees with their glossy leaves would reach up and over the street. Most of all, I remembered a sense of belonging in a place larger than me, and larger even than the Pine Street which I called home.
- Jade