rolling down the hill with eyes wide open

Rolling down the hill. The nostalgia for childhood wrapped in the reality of adultness. The feel of the pace slowly at first but reaching a speed beyond my own imagination. Me painted in oshkosh pink or green corduroys overalls and probably a striped shirt. Sometimes head first. No worries of protecting my brain or body. Other times engaging in child research of what happens when I roll on my side. For the exhilaration is the goal. And no connections of wires to worry or experience to say what happens if. The rolling down the hill of my childhood has crossed over through the jungle of adolescence and the earth turns into and through adulthood.

The roller coaster of life is now my own rolling down the hill. Into a relationship. Into a possibility of one. It has been that way since the beginning. The fast pace and not knowing what will happen next the excitement of what is to come and what is beautifully played out in my smiling expression upon my face. Just letting go and descending down the hill not knowing what will happen but it will be fun. And I might get hurt. But still chasing what was. And what will come. The exhilaration in the pit of my stomach of jumping into the water without easing in. But it hasn't always been pretty. My trips down hills of lust and love and everything in between. I have skinned my knees and stopped mid hill wondering what happened to my speed and sat at the bottom of hill in many pieces- with no one to put me together but me. No nursery rhyme to save me. Because I am no longer a child and now know the risks of rolling down the hill, especially a san francisco one, that I decided I had to stop rolling down the hill at a pace too much. It was fine. Fine until now.

As I stand before a hill. With both anticipation and hope and knowledge of what could happen as I begin this descend down this hill. Can I change how I make my way down and still enjoy the ride down? Can it happen without a trip to the er? Can I begin again without the surround sound of the past playing on repeat? Can I do it? Roll down this hill. And not let the excitement to take me over into a place where a child can only live. You got to travel down this hill. The hill onto what will be next.

But this time I stand staring over the horizon of this beautiful city, water colored into a way paint by number could ever dream of, I take it in. And think. Before I feel my head hang down and my hands touch the grass swimming in water and the excitement moves down from the depths of my stomach champanged to the top of a growing smile. And in thinking. And in seeing. In rolling down this hill. Might be at a pace. That I can live with.