Dear Pacific Heights: The Winning Love Letter

Pacific Heights, you send me. You send me down a sidewalk where English bulldogs, poodles and three-legged rescues lunge in their leashes toward Alta Plaza, the emerald jewel that tops this district, its gnarled trees whipped by the wind. You send me to a corner where every afternoon a woman in her 70s boards the bus to Union Square, her black Chanel sunglasses that she bought during the Ford administration perfectly perched on her soft nose. Today she wears a lavender suit and gloves. A flurry of girls in kneesocks, holding lacrosse sticks, swirl around her. Neighbors carry yoga mats and coffee; ballet students with duffel bags and ponytails walk perfectly erect, as dancers do. The woman in lavender smiles behind her sunglasses. Some days, I wish I was her. You see me standing in the street late at night, way past bedtime, observing a shiny cab pulling up to a house. Two brothers in dinosaur jammies stand at the threshold, fingers dancing on the doorjamb, watching a man in a trench coat unload a suitcase. Finally, the younger one can wait no more. He breaks from the house and sprints on his tiptoes across the cold sidewalk, arms out in front of him. “Papa!” he squeals, and in the next second he is in the arms of his father, his tiny, fat, naked feet lifted off the ground. They are speaking French to each other. The father carries his younger son into the house, touching the head of his eldest as he enters. I watch them close the door, and in an instant, a cloud of fog curls over the peak of the street, tumbling in ribbons of gray around my legs, arms and torso. The misty droplets kiss my face. It feels like love.