From the top I can see the entire Bay. Angel Island. The Bay Bridge. The impossibly bright Golden Gate. The TransAmerica building rises up from the San Francisco skyline, the unblinking eye above it only visible to me. In the opposite direction I can see all the way to Rodeo Beach, unless there is a fog, which slyly wraps and hushes everything between. If it is early, my shoes are often wet and the back of my neck is chilled rather than cooled by sweat. Sometimes I have company. A raven. A hawk. A ladybug. Twice a coyote who kept a polite distance as we both surveyed the vivid blue below. No one taught me to do this. Once the interplay between the fog and the sun created a circle outlined in the colors of a faint, thin rainbow, like a projection onto a giant screen. I found my shadow in the center. Arms raised I rivaled the height of the mountains.
Very early in the morning, my dog will ask to get up on the bed. Her methods are both insistent and polite. If I have left her collar on, she will shake it, until I turn on my side and hold out my hand to touch her nose and invite her to jump up. If the collar is off she will utter what can only be described as a whisper bark until the hand is offered, the invitation made. Sliding between my husband and I she will lean her back against one of us and push her feet off the other. If she is leaning against me, I will sometimes take her paw from underneath, the way I held my mother's hand in church. After she has fallen back asleep I know the dreaming has started when her paw begins to twitch rhythmically, as if reading Braille from my skin.
