To get to my house, you have to climb the steepest hill in the city.
No one dares to take it on. The mail carriers leave our mail in a shared mailbox we set up at the bottom of the slope. Their union requested it after seeing that employees assigned here were constantly calling in sick. Bus drivers wait down below. At first, they’d give us an extra minute of courtesy, to make up for the time it took us to walk down, but the new ones have forgotten that ritual and don’t even stop anymore unless they see someone waiting in front of them. Family and friends who live in the same city don’t visit us. They’d rather play host and don’t mind mopping up the drops of sweat we leave on their shiny floors, as long as we spare them from climbing the most painful hill in the city. Only those of us who live up here look at it with indifference. Forgetting about it or taking it for granted—that’s the best way to get to my house.
One might think what a misfortune, what poor people punished with unnecessary pain. But there’s a voice inside us that tells us things are fine this way, that they shouldn’t change and that it’s enough. Following this impulse, we’ve spent decades blocking the city hall cranes that come here to “improve mobility in the outskirts.” We’ve seen what happens when they put in escalators and elevators in the other neighborhoods. The old folks stop calling the kids to carry up the overflowing cart with the week’s groceries, and the kids end up forgetting their names. The workers lose that proud smile from their faces. Parents realize they haven’t really done much, and so do their children. Neighbors stop needing each other, then they stop greeting each other, and soon they’re accusing one another, blaming each other for their own personal misfortunes. We’re not sure, but we believe there’s something in the sweat of the climb that keeps the fabric alive.
A father offers his children what he’s learned in life to survive his environment. Mine left me a hill, and that’s what I want to leave mine—the same hill. I’m not sure it’s for the best; sometimes doubts assault me. My kids visit their friends in the flat neighborhoods and come back with questions I don’t know how to answer in their language: why don’t we want elevators, Dad; why don’t my friends get home sweaty like we do; what was it like before I was born, Dad.
It was the same, son—I answer. It’s always been this way.
The hill you have to climb to get to my house is an irregularity on the horizon and a burden on progress, the mayor always reminds us. City hall has realized that our muscles and our determination are weakening. Our children watch with curiosity at the machines that come to modernize the neighborhood, the only ones willing to climb the last hill in the city. They’ve noticed that too.
I probably think this way because nostalgia is starting to lick at my feet. I don’t know. The hill will disappear and our sweat with it.