From January through March I participated in a daily writing challenge – each day the people participating were given a new prompt and asked to produce a new piece. This is one of the selections from that project. The title is the prompt.

San Francisco is a city of four sides and three edges, the ocean and bay capping the sides and top making clear “thou shalt go no further”. Travel south though and the city continues, dense housing giving way to less dense housing, compact shopping streets turning into malls and then strip malls, until the spaces between the buildings grow larger, and without realizing it, you are now driving through gold-brown hills dotted with infrequent mansions. On the journey there is no obvious point where the transition occurs, but eventually you acknowledge you are no longer in the city.

Break out the map though – society’s view of the city – and the edge is there. Stark. And all the imaginary things change at that point.

Zipcodes change.

Taxes change.

Supervisors or councillors change.

Society has defined an edge where landscape demurs to be so impolite.

I do not feel old. My body can still run. My hips can still sway. My mind remembers yesterday, and the day before. Yet I’m closer now to the final country than ever, and the face that stares back at me in the mirror is my father’s not mine. There was no moment in reality when it happened, no true demarcation. 

Alas yesterday, when the AARP invitation showed up in the mail, my wife laughed and said, “Now you’re old.”