Narrow Escapes - Melody Cryns

Yesterday I drove to San Francisco and parked at the end of the street where my daughter Melissa lives at Twin Peaks, and looking out her bedroom window is amazing…half of San Francisco stretched out before you. We took my dog for a walk, and Melissa showed me these wooden steps that went up on top of a hill, and we hiked up the steps and a sandy path to a clearing that took my breath away…all of San Francisco lay stretched around us…from the ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge on one side, to St. Ignatious Church to the Bay Bridge and the downtown skyscrapers…

It took my breath away…

Funny because when I was a kid we hiked up at Sutro Forest not far from where Melissa and I stood…looking at the City. And we were accustomed to seeing the entire City stretched out before us. We’d climb up hillsides and take risks…climbing up the sides of the mountains and the sides of cliffs alongside the ocean…narrowly escaping plunging to our deaths.

Back then we didn’t think anything of it. We were invincible then…we didn’t worry about whether we’d fall because we knew we wouldn’t, or if we did fall, we’d still be okay.

But looking out on the City on top of that hill with the wind blowing so hard, I felt as if I had to hang on to something and my small dog’s hair flew on end…she looked as if she was about ready to fly away.

“Be careful Melissa!” I shouted into the wind as she walked towards the side of the cliff to look out towards the Golden Gate.

“Isn’t this amazing?” she shouted back, standing right on the edge of the rocky hillside. Her hair blew in all directions.

“Yes, it’s fabulous! But be careful!”

“Oh Mom…Since when are you afraid of anything?”

I laughed…how many times had I narrowly escaped – not just cliffs and hillsides, but how many times had we narrowly escaped losing our place to live, or our electricity…or how many times had I wondered how I would get through just one more month with my four kids, just one more month…get me through the next month, the next week – or the next day. How many times had I felt as if me and the kids floated down the street on a lifeboat, and sometimes that nice little stream felt like the rushing river I’d take my kids to during the summer at Little North Fork in Oregon…how we’d all float downstream on that large double bed air mattress that we used as a raft…sometimes that raft would narrowly escape a rock that jutted out, threatening us…sometimes we all hung on for dear life…me and the kids. And other times we just floated along…

Life had come full circle, and there I was standing on top of the world with my daughter Melissa and my dog Sydney, who reminded me so much of Nikki, the little white dog who always accompanied me when I grew up in the City…

As I walked up to Melissa right near the edge, holding on tight to my little white dog’s leash, I put my arm around her and we both looked out on to the City, the ocean and the Bay…

I was finally home.