Jadyne and I walk a lot. Frequently our walks from Berkeley, or Albany, all points lower than our Kensington home, finish on a stairway between Boynton and Vermont Avenues. We've taken these stairs hundreds of times, often more than once a day. From the top it's a hop, step, and a little jump to our home on Rugby Avenue. Jadyne reminded me the other day, "There are seventy steps, here, David, one for each year you've been alive." I'd never thought of them that way, and now I can't walk up them without thinking of them, that each step represents a year of my life. Here they are:
At the end of a long uphill walk I don't look forward to these.
Step 16. I got my driver's license, and my parents, in an incomprehensible decision, allowed me to take Chip Meyers to Coney Island the same day in my Dad's 1961 VW bug. We eventually sold it to Harry Morrison who didn't realize that it had a fourth gear, so he blew it up on 101 in 3rd gear at 75 mph.
Step 23. Jadyne and I were married in 1970, when I was twenty-three years old. She was one step behind me. The step, like the marriage, is still in pretty good shape.
September 26th, 1974. Jason is born. We're now a real family.
I'm thirty in 1976. I left a To Do list on the refrigerator for Jadyne. I had written. "Go to hospital. Have a baby girl." She did. In 1976 the technology didn't exist that would determine sex beforehand. We use up the second naming "J" for Jennifer. It was a second choice behind "Sarah", but we intended to give her a middle name of "Lee" after Jadyne's grandparents, and we thought that "Sarah Lee" wouldn't have been a fun name to live with.
1979. Thirty-third step. John is born. Coincidentally, I get a vasectomy. I thought that I would go on a road trip the next day to Sequoia National Park, but instead spent that day, legs akimbo, reading "The World According to Garp."
Been there. Done that.
Here's the top, the seventieth step. The path simply leads to two additional steps, which then take you to Vermont Avenue. It may be trite, but when I climb to the top of these steps I'm relieved to have made it. I feel as if I've accomplished something. Even though there are no more concrete steps I'm hopeful that metaphorical ones remain, and that they remain in as good a shape as the ones in this photograph.