"The Day My Mother Was Born: August 26"

San Francisco, August 2016 — Fog rolling through downtown like memory itself. Quiet, indifferent, and always returning.

🌀 CHARLES JOURNAL ENTRY Rewritten: August 26, 2016 — San Francisco
San Francisco: peace and quiet, a world apart. A city so removed from the noise we forget others exist. But forgetting isn’t the same as not loving. And absence doesn’t mean indifference. I do love him—my darling boy—on the opposite side of the world. My own. My mirror. My myth. My other self that he is.

Golden Gate. Bay fog. A morning of decisions: what shoes to wear? Doctor’s appointment at 11. No lilies at work—my allergies are brutal. The new girl—what is she, really? She calls herself a drag queen. I thought she was a girl. But can a woman be a drag queen? Or is she something else entirely?

Her face—angular, deliberate. Three days in a row: long grey skirt, pink lipstick. A closet full of grey, maybe. A view of the cold, engaging bay. She left flowers on my desk. I arrived two hours late. They made me sick.

I’m drawn to people who don’t fit. Or maybe I just don’t fit myself. What is normal, anyway? And why should I care?

He’s always somewhere—on my mind. That boy in another world. The one who draws me in. There’s a chance I am him. And he is me. And after we die, there’s nothing else. Not even Marilyn Monroe.
 
Epilogue:  I believe my mother was born this day. August 26. I’ll probably call her later… much later if I remember it.

Update August 14, 2025:  The boy is now a man, still here...the other side of the world. I didn’t remember her birthday, was distracted in the evening. We had our issues.  And now she’s gone. She wasn’t part of the fog or the bay or the quiet mornings in San Francisco. She was born in South Carolina, raised me through her absence, and left me in the care of her parents.

We were never simple. But she was mine.

Back then, I thought love was a question. Now I know it’s a rhythm. A pulse. A presence.

The denim storefront, the foggy street, the lilies on my desk— they were all part of the climb. Part of the becoming.

And now, nine years later, I look back not to rewrite, but to remember.

San Francisco, August 2016 — Denim storefront in the fog. A city selling itself while I tried to find myself. Quiet, indifferent, and always returning.

□ Mt. Sutro Steps, August 2016 — Twilight climb into silence. Three figures ascending, moonlit and unknowable. The city behind, the ocean ahead. Somewhere between forgetting and becoming.