A Path to Joy! | weavetheweb

A Path to Joy

by David Eric Hickman

Behind the scenes machinations or not, the day was perfectly inscribed in memory and the lessons were taken in and digested fruitfully: family connection can be fun and rewarding, ome days are truly unforgettable and if you stay vigilant, fog like fear will clear a path to joy.

The red-tipped tops of the two towers peeked intermittently from under the fog like the eyes of an old man half-buried beneath bushy, white eyebrows that threatened to consume the rest of his face. Gazing out of the third-story window of the Pink Palace, I watched with hope and concern, waiting for the fog to clear decisively. My day depended on it. My father’s room in the Pink Palace was under the dormers on the top west corner of the building, overlooking Scott Street below and the San Francisco Bay farther on. A chair was positioned in the window that provided this view, and it was here that I spent my waiting hours during my visits to my father in his new home.

My Dad would always arrange to be off work when I came out from Maryland, and he planned wonderful adventures for us together, but there were invariably some days when the office beckoned and could not be ignored. The

chair, the window and the view became my companions and I got to know them well.

The phone rang, and my Dad’s voice came across, encouraging me that the fog would in fact clear. This always happens in San Francisco, he explained. Fog comes in the morning and burns off by midday, leaving bright and sunny afternoons in its wake. We chatted and then I went back to my vigil, watching as my hopes for the day waxed and waned with the swells of ephemeral mist shrouding the south tower of the bridge. The clock was the next target of my attention – I had only a few hours for this fog to “burn off” if the day’s plans were to come to fruition. The fog was not my only concern – it was simply the most pragmatic and tangible one.

It is funny how my mind will focus on the most concrete concerns to buffer the more abstract ones. A distant relation of mine, Joel Nixon, was to arrive to accompany me on our bridge quest. Joel was one of those relatives whose relationship to oneself is almost impossible to describe. If you have the type of mind that can’t let go of weird little puzzles, then knowing someone like Joel is what will finally teach you how family trees actually work. My Dad and I had spent dinner the night before muddling through the structure on a napkin in a pizza place, finally concluding that Joel was my second cousin twice removed. At least that is how I remember it; that may not in fact be the case, and even more significantly, I don’t remember what that means. It just meant family, and family I had never met over the course of fifteen years worth of Christmases, weddings, family vacations and the occasional funeral. I was to meet Joel for the first time in about an hour.

On the plus side, he was supposed to be about my brother’s age, around 19 or so, so it wasn’t like he was some old codger that I would have to struggle to relate to. On the down side, I wondered if it would be possible for us to enjoy our time together at all. At least old codgers will ask you questions and want to know all about you. What do 19 year olds do?

Another furtive 45 minutes passed, and with it, the final wisps of cotton that clung to the bridge evaporated. One last call to my Dad confirmed that the plans were on! My excitement was apparent, and when the knock came at the door, I was feeling less concerned about the day than before. I began to think, Joel is the perfect person to do this with. What old codger would be up for this kind of day, anyway? I opened the door and before me stood a stocky guy with close-cut red hair, round glasses and a mirthful smile. Right away, he got off a joke, something about toothpaste, and we were off. I suppose it is always a little awkward meeting new people, but we managed quite well, definitely getting some laughs over trying to identify exactly how we were related. Joel drove and we set off for the parking lot at the south end of the bridge.

Leaving the car, we walked out in the now crystal clear noon sun toward the south tower of the bridge. There, at our appointed time, we met a park ranger who was to be our guide. I didn’t realize how significant this was at first, but the man was rather large. He looked to be in his fifties, and carried a good-sized spare tire about his waist. He was a good-tempered guy, although I seem to remember Joel’s witty cracks floating right past him.

This provided yet another chance to connect to my cousin. There is a certain type of pleasure derived from getting a joke that someone else does not, and it can tie you irrevocably to that person with nothing more than a quick glance or a wink. I was smiling more and more as the day went on. The ranger sat us down facing backward in a small jitney that resembled a golf cart. Apparently, our trip was a special privilege, and the trappings of luxury were being trotted out on our behalf. We coasted among the pedestrians, tourists and joggers who haunt the walkway of the bridge, many of them eyeing us with questioning curiosity. The jitney hummed along, coming to a stop at the base of the south tower. The ranger produced a key and unlocked the red steel door at the base of the tower. It creaked open at his touch, and he beckoned us within. Tourists passing by on the famous bridge walk stole astonished glances in our direction and the door closed quickly. We were inside a small room lit by lights suspended from the ceiling. The ranger gave as a quick talk, explaining the routine we would follow and what safety measures were to be observed. His first topic was the elevator. It was very small, he said, and Joel and I would have to stand nose to nose for the duration of the lift. He would accompany us as well, so his bulk would be pressed against the two of us on the side. He must have assumed Joel and I would be more comfortable eye-to-eye than either of us would be with him. Of course, I had only known Joel 25 minutes longer than I had the ranger! Stepping into the elevator, Joel’s humor eased what tension there was, and he made strange faces at me the entire ride. This was definitely more than I could have expected from the ranger. The antiquated elevator took five minutes to ascend the tower’s height. Arriving finally at the top, we burst forth from the small doorway and found ourselves in another room. The ranger climbed a ladder in the center of the room, unlocked a trap door and pushed it up and open. Daylight cascaded into the room and all of a sudden, the reality of what we were about to do arrived like a fast subway train pulling into an underground station.

We followed the ranger up the ladder and emerged onto the top of the uppermost crossbar of the bridge, the one with the little round satellite dish perched upon it. Immediately, I grabbed the railing of the walkway, and my eyes feasted on the panoramic and abundant view. Down below were the little teeny cars that you could no longer really hear. Below that, the swells of the bay rolled by, crashing on the concrete piers of the towers. To my left lay the picturesque hills of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which now loomed surprisingly less large. To my right sprawled the city that at the time was still new to me, a mixture of excitement and intimidation for a boy who grew up in the suburbs. Naturally, I tried to pick out the window in the Pink Palace where I had sat earlier that day, watching the very spot where now I stood.

The ranger explained the walkways and handholds and how we were to navigate our way around. He then let us explore and told us we could stay as long as we wanted.

He underlined how fortunate we were that the fog had cleared. If the tower had still been shrouded, safety would have dictated a cancellation of this trip.

We crossed back and forth on the center beam, and we realized that we were actually moving. The tower itself sways ever so slightly with the wind and elements, an effect that is magnified at the tippy top of the

tower. A fly feels this same effect as the fast moving end of the swatter buys his farm, while the hand swinging the handle exerts very little effort at all. I began to hope our chances of survival were a little higher.Courage came into play as we edged out to the outer catwalk. This will involve some visualization. First, one had to climb the steps from the center crossbar’s walkway up to the walkway that circled one of the tower spires. Once ascended, the next challenge was to negotiate the giant cable that was, in fact, holding up the entire structure. This entailed laying on one’s back and inching along through the small space between the catwalk and the cable. Once emerging on the other side, standing was again possible although only with an iron grip on the railing.

This was the proverbial “edge” that people sometimes go out on. One stood on a small catwalk, really a grate, through which was visible almost 800 feet of air ending abruptly in roiling bay water.

Gripping the rail, I edged about the outer rim with my back propped against the tower spire. A little vertigo kicked in, but the thrill was immense and

the perspective was utterly unique. I realized at this moment that never again would I be standing in this spot, seeing this view, feeling this dizzy.

Joel was following behind, having navigated the same labyrinthine route under the cable. He was awed by the view, but somehow I still remember a few joking remarks, undoubtedly something about jumping off a bridge, or possibly about pissing in the wind. We inhaled the view for a while, then whipped out cameras and began documenting the experience.

At first, we shot photos of the two of us, just to prove we had been there. After that, I decided a few pictures taken from the “crawling under the cable position” were needed to help drive home the experience of sliding on one’s back on the grating. I think we even got the portly ranger to snap one of the two of us. Like all exhilarating experiences, there was undoubtedly an ending,

although I don’t remember it at all.

At some point, we must have decided we were done, followed the ranger down the ladder, into the elevator and back down to the deck of the bridge. We must have taken a ride back in the little jitney, thanked our guide profusely and driven away in the car back to the house.

Or possibly, we met my father for lunch downtown and told him all about the experience. As is probably always true with this type of adventure, one does not typically recall the mundane details of what follows just after the climax.

Years later, driving through Portland, Oregon, I recalled that Joel had made his home there. I was visiting the city of Portland to play a music gig in a bar. Now in my twenties, I was experimenting with what direction my life would take, and “musician” was one of my hopeful endeavors. Needing a place to stay, I looked up Joel and he offered to put us up for the night at his place in the city. We arrived and met an older and slightly mellower Joel, along with his wife Laura. Both were school teachers, which was the other career I had been developing. I remember sitting up for hours, inebriated, talking about amphibians. They had a large aquarium with fish and small frogs that became an endless source of entertainment. Laura even drove us around at one point. They were still full of humor and life and still family, however quixotic the connection.

I would like to think that my dad “had to work” that day because he knew only two people could go up in the elevator and he wanted those two people to be Joel and myself. My dad has always cared about connecting to family, taking the time to tell me stories of various distant relations or to engineer togetherness when possible. I would like to think he felt that Joel represented a potentially good connection for me, being young (as in “not old”) and possessing a sense of humor. I would like to think that my dad had all this planned when he arranged for the trip up the bridge through a friend who had “connections”.

Behind-the-scenes-machinations or not, the day was permanently inscribed in memory, and the lessons were taken in and digested fruitfully: family connection can be fun and rewarding, some days are truly unforgettable, and if you stay vigilant, fog, like fear, will clear a path to joy.