[wind]

A San Francisco street in the Richmond district. A hill, of course. The buildings particolored, the sidewalk gray but sparkling with flecks of mica. I am outside in a puffy jacket in winter, waiting to be picked up after school. I am not waiting with friends — I don't really have friends. But today, I am waiting with the wind.

It rushes up the street from the downhill side, this wind, flowing out of a clear blue sky. It's not the fog coming in, but something stranger and stronger. It holds me up as I lean into it, and it blows steadily, not in gusts. It is the strongest wind I have ever felt.

Too soon a car comes to take me home. Later that night, my father tells me that he was one of the last to cross the Golden Gate Bridge before it was closed. He says the cables were vibrating like piano strings. "Did they make a sound?" I ask, but he doesn't know: he kept his windows rolled up. In his rear-view mirror, he saw the deck begin to tilt and drift in the stiffening wind.

Later, at Passover, I am thinking about how similar our weather is with Israel's. I wonder if they've had winds like this one, and whether it was such a wind that rained a plague of locusts upon the Egyptians.