I walked outside at lunchtime today and saw a few Canada geese hanging out on the lawn as I walked 'round the labyrinth and found myself thinking of that ocean breeze yesterday and the cool water at my feet and of San Francisco.

Mike's 10-year-old daughter, Bridgette, is visiting for a week, and she's never been to San Francisco, so yesterday, we parked the car in a shady spot and walked down the Land's End Trail. The sky was a dazzling blue with small "drifts" of fog floating around. Sailboats dotted the bay, and as we came around a bend and saw the entire Golden Gate Bridge, Bridgette gasped and said, "Can we go on that bridge?"

"Yes, you can ride bikes across the bridge," said Megan. "And, my Mom did it when she was young. Oh yeah, and you can drive."

We walked further down the trail passing purple and yellow wildflowers and hundreds of Nasturtiums, which grow wild all around San Francisco.

Kyle and Megan kept running ahead of Mike. Bridgette and I, found these steps built into the side of a cliff.

"Let's go down them!" said Kyle.

I looked down and saw what looked like hundreds of wooden steps etched into the cliff, leading down to a small beach. Then, I saw the old Land's End trail on the side of the cliff, the one we used to walk on when I was a kid. Now a much better and safer road higher up makes it a lot easier to walk along Land's End.

"C'mon!" said Mike.

We practically ran down the stairs until we got to the very bottom, to a beautiful and very rocky beach. From where we stood, the sailboats looked as if we could almost run out and jump on them, and the small tower with the foghorn that everyone thought was a tugboat at first was practically right in front of us.

We balanced on rocks to get to the beach itself, and Megan found a giant piece of driftwood with another piece balanced across -- the perfect "teeter-totter." She and Kyle immediately got on it and began swaying up and down.

We found a rusted shopping cart, wondering how the heck it had gotten down to this beach. "Someone probably pushed it down the cliff," I said.

When we got to the beach area, still walking around rocks of all different shapes and sizes, we took off our shoes and socks and ran out into the water. Mike was in the water even before I was, feeling the coolness around our feet and legs -- not too hot and not too cold. Perfect. We wandered down the beach dodging rocks. At one point, we had to wait for the tide to go out so that we could run between two giant rocks to get to the other side. By the time we got to the other end, we were all pretty wet. But, it was a sunny day, and our clothes would not take long to dry.

"I have to use the restroom!" said Megan, hopping up and down. We found a restroom down there at the beach, only it was a part of an old demolished restroom that most likely resided on one of the hillsides above at one time, maybe 20 or 30 years ago.

So, we made our way back to our shoes, and just in time or our shoes would have been washed into the ocean forever; the tide was coming in.

When we got back to the wooden steps, I looked up and shuddered. "I'll never make it," I thought, watching Megan and Kyle jog up the stairs as if they had been doing it their entire lives. Next thing I knew, they were almost at the top looking down at us.

"C'mon! You can do it!" they shouted, their voices echoing against the rocks. Bridgette trudged up the stairs, slowly but steady, and Mike jogged up a few steps, then stopped to look behind at me.

After managing to get up a few of the steps, I stopped to gasp for air. "It's okay!" I shouted dramatically. You go on ahead! Just leave me here to die!"

"You're just fine! C'mon!" Mike shouted.

"No, I'm not! Man, I should've known better than to come down all of these stairs!" I managed to get up a few more steps and then stopped to catch my breath again. My heart was beating pretty fast.

"I feel like I'm gonna have a heart attack!" I shouted.

"No, you're not," said Mike. "You're heart rate is up."

I managed to get up a few more steps. "Oh," I said. "You could've fooled me."

In the end, as I trudged up the last few steps, Kyle, Megan, Bridgette and Mike all stood at the top looking down.

"You can do it! Just 10 more steps!" they shouted.

I slowly made my way up the last 10 steps, as everyone counted them down. I wasn't sure whether to be irritated or to laugh. I thought of Rocky Balboa from the original Rocky movie years ago. That "Rocky" music playing in the background, "Da da da daaaaaa, da da daaaa!" In the movie, the first time Rocky tried to jog up all of those steps, he could barely do it, was breathing hard, felt like he was gonna die. It was only after he started working out and lifting weights and boxing and drinking those raw egg drinks that suddenly he could just jog up those steps as if they were nothing.

"You did it!" everyone shouted as I finally made it up the last step. I wanted to throw my arms up in the air like Rocky, but that would have been just too weird. So, I sat on a piece of wood for a few minutes to recover from my trek up those hundreds of steps.

We backed down the Land's End trail, this time turning to the left at the fork to the gravel parking lot right above the cliffhouse. The entire Pacific Ocean stretched out before us. We sat on a bench to empty sand from our shoes.

"I have sand everywhere," said Bridgette. "Even in my shorts!"

As we walked to the sidewalk, we looked down and noticed that half of the Cliffhouse had been torn down and that major construction was going on. I stopped to look, my mouth dropped open in shock.

"They tore a bunch of stuff down, part of San Francisco history!" I said.

"But, remember, a lot of it looked as if it was falling down anyway, even where the Mechanique Museum was," said Mike, who is always so practical.

"But, but it was San Francisco history. Hardly anything is left."

"Mom, we've gotta find a bathroom!" said Megan, who was jumping up and down.

"Oh yeah, I don't even know where the bathrooms are," I said, as we walked down towards the cliffhouse, this time through a fenced off "construction" area and finally found some restrooms -- which were actually bungalows.

It just didn't look the same there anymore, not at all how I remember it. Why do things have to keep changing, I thought, surveying the disastrous scene.

"It's okay," said Mike, putting his arm around me as we trudged back up the hill -- another hill, not quite as bad as the steps though. "It'll be so much better than it was when they're finished."

"It won't ever be the same again," I said.

We decided to stop at Louie's Restaurant because everyone was hungry and thirsty, at least for salads and drinks as we weren't sure how expensive it was there. It was nice to sit at a table overlooking the ocean. I ordered iced tea, Megan ordered orange slice, and Kyle, Mike and Bridgette all ordered Pepsis.

As we sat there enjoying our salads and sourdough bread, I took a bite and suddenly felt a pull and a "crunch" in my mouth. Something wasn't right. I managed to pull out something from the bread, the cap to one of my front teeth, second to the front. The dentist had just put a temporary cap on the tooth a week and a half ago, and I was supposed to go back in for the permanent cap on Wednesday night.

"Oh no! My cap just came out," I said, looking at Mike.

"Maybe you should go to the restroom, umm...no. No, don't go to the restroom and look. Please don't."

"Why not?" I asked, and we both realized with horror that the entire tooth had broken off with the temporary cap. One of my front teeth had completely broken. It was simply no longer there, except a small piece next to the gum.

I put a hand up to my mouth. Suddenly, I had completely lost my appetite. "This is awful!" I said. Tears filled my eyes, and Mike put his arm around me.

"It's okay, babe. Really it is. Don't cry."

Is this what happens when you turn 46, when you get older? Do your teeth suddenly start to fall out at restaurants and stuff like that?

The kids just sort of stared at me. "It's all right Mom," said Megan.

All right? One of my front teeth had just disappeared. I would never look the same again! Suddenly, I didn't even want to open my mouth.

I sat close to Mike while everyone else finished eating, holding my mouth the entire time, taking occasional sips of iced tea.

"Maybe we should just go home or you should try to get a hold of a dentist or something."

"No!" I shouted. "We can't do that! We're in San Francisco. Besides, there's nothing that they'll be able to do for me today."

"Yeah, you're probably right. Okay, if you feel up to it."

In spite of my missing tooth, we had to go to Golden Gate Park and take Bridgette to Children's Playground.

"It's the best playground you've ever seen," said Kyle.

"There's no other place like it," said Megan.

We parked at the top of the hill, miraculously managing to find a parking spot, and walked down to Children's Playground, past the merry-go-round that has been there forever, maybe even 100 years, the merry-go-round I rode on back in 1962 when my Mother first took me here, and I was five years old.

"Hey! There's a moon swing!" Megan shouted. "And, there's no one in it! Let's go!"

The kids all ran towards the empty moon swing. Bridgette sat in one of the metal seats while Kyle and Megan got on either side of it and pumped. Mike and I bought merry-go-round tickets for all of us, and we sat down on a bench enjoying the late afternoon sun with the sea breeze, watching all of the children play.

I forgot about the missing tooth for a while.

We could hear the congo drums at Hippie Hill behind Children's Playground, just as I had remembered as a child. Some things never do change, I thought.

After a thrilling ride on the merry-go-round where Bridgette and Mike both tried to get to the frog first and Bridgette won, we walked down the path towards the lake and Stanyan and Haight Streets -- to Ameba Records. We couldn't leave San Francisco without checking out Ameba Records, after all.

"Hey, Bridgette, I grew up right nearby here, and I used to play here all the time when I was a kid..." I started to say.

"Oh, I already know," said Bridgette. "You used to walk here and play and ride down that hill over there on the skateboard." Bridgette pointed to the hill on the other side of the playground with the picnic tables on the side. "And, you used to ride on the moon swings with your Mom here."

"Yeah, umm..how did…"

"And, the conga drums played and you could hear them as a kid, and you had a favorite tree you used to climb too, and that barn over there used to have a lot of animals in it."

"Yes, but how did you know?"

"Megan told me everything!" Bridgette said.

Megan grinned from ear to ear. Wow, she remembered...she knows, I thought. I walked alongside Megan and put my arm on her shoulders. We walked arm-in-arm through the tunnel, which lead to the small lake.

"And my Mom used to come here with her Mom and eat fish n' chips!" said Megan to Bridgette and anyone else who wanted to know.

That's when I suddenly realized something -- why we must tell the stories, or write them down. Megan is only ten now, but some day, she'll grow up and maybe have kids of her own. And, she'll bring her kids to this very same place, to Children's Playground, and to this lake. And, she'll tell her children that she came here with her Mom and played, and her Mom played in this very same place when she was a little girl, and her Grandma rode on the moon swings with her Mom, and they all rode on the merry-go-round just as they were doing.

Then, perhaps - no one will ever forget.

That's what I thought of as I walked through the labyrinth today, bracing myself to face the dentist at 5:00 p.m. this evening, realizing that Canada geese don't even have any teeth.

Happy Monday.

Always,

Melody
New email address: melodywrites@comcast.net
http://www.deadjournal.com/users/melodywrites/