Red Sunflower, Long Friendship

It was sometime between our driving to Crissy Field and up to the underskirt of the bridge, sometime in the midst of climbing up to Gary crow's nest to watch the fog escalate on the horizon, sometime while cooking and then, again, while eating, that I remembered how it has been for Kate Moses and me—how our friendship began with a question: Will you write an essay for our anthology? It was a decade ago, I think, the glory days of Salon.com, where she worked as an editor with her husband, and ever since our lives have tangled—her friends becoming mine, her stories familiar and extending, her beautiful face a signpost, her presence one of the reasons San Francisco feels, to me, like a second home, a place that is mine, too, for she has given it to me, in increments, over time.

See this, she says. Let me take you here, she insists. Climb into Gary's '66 convertible Mustang and go for a ride into the sun and out of the sun and all the way down Lombard. Then it is some crazy hour, late at night, and she is drawing you a map of the Mission, listing out the best restaurants, reminding you of the fossil shop where, once again, you'll go, this time with family.

I am blessed by friendships long and continuing. I am blessed by hearts that remember.