To be eighty-nine on the day of a full moon. To be walking without a cane. To hear giggles and laughter and loving words all around her. To stop midway descending the stairway named after her and show off her colorful socks. There ought to be a song that’s called “I Love Adah”.
She gives steady hugs to all, with champagne in one hand and flowers in the other. She wears a long white jacket that has hand-painted stairways of San Francisco. Once she asked me if I knew how many stairways there are in the city. “Eighty? A hundred?” That sounded like a lot to me. “No,” she rolled her eyes, “Over six hundred.” And she had walked them all. Her book, Stairway Walks in San Francisco, is in its 7th edition.
A child counted ninety-six steps. Another counted ninety-one. On the top of the stairway at Waller and Broderick is a bronze plaque: Adah Bakalinsky, Queen of San Francisco Stairway.
