Roaring in San Francisco

Friday, I left FF for the first time. I am writing from Napa Valley, via San Francisco, where I spent my twenties bartending and kissing strangers. And I am visiting my former San Franciso roommate Eve, who was complicit in many of the crimes committed.

This is an old roomie trip, one of the very best kind.

It was a little tough to leave the Fox.  I endangered myself and others by calling M on my cell as I drove to the airport. I then started to cry.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“Yes, I’m just so happy to be going and so grateful you supported me going and I’m going to miss you both so much.” I said.

I cried in the airport, also. Just a little. On the plane. Sitting with Caroline and Eve in Farley’s café in Portrero Hill and then I was here.

God, I love this city.

We walked the sidewalks in the Mission, past the chi-chi antique shops that are now sharing elbow room with the Latin grocery stores and their warm fruits. Two guys in hats and sunglasses were leaning out the top window of a blocky building, rapping to the world. Eve started to dance, a low-down elbow boogie and the guys roared and then rapped their approval.

“It’s like being serenaded,” she said.

We went to Haight street and got carded and the door man whispered to me as I walked past “You don’t look your age.” I didn’t feel it. I felt 21 again, seeing Haight street for the first time, wanting nothing more than to live in one of the second floor, bay window apartments and wake to the street’s morning music every day. We drank snakebites at what used to be the Achilles Heel and talked with the bartender about what a “snakebite” was, vs. a “black satin,” vs. a “black velvet.” (And in case you have ever wondered: Is it a “black and tan” without Harp’s? The answer is: No. It is not.)  Who cares about names? We liked our pints of pear cider layered with Guinness.

We realized that it was – OMG! – 18 years ago that we lived here. Eve called it “A Jurassic Age” since we used to get all thundered up and go down to the Mad Dog in the Fog. A lot has happened. And we talked about many of those things. But the main thing was the earthquake called “Motherhood,” which has ripped us both up and laid us back down again. It has weathered us and polished us and made us closer. I welled up again. Eve raised her glass. The dark layer of Guinness floated on the sparkly layer of pear cider, both so essential to the character of the drink.

“To Motherhood,” she said.

"To Motherhood,” I answered.

THE CHICKADEES ARE BACK!

The chickadees are back.

I haven't wanted to mention it. Afraid to jinx it or something. Every morning, I sip my coffee, tense until I look out and see that they are still there, still coming and going from the nest box on our gatepost. 

But we are into it now. We are past nest-building and egg warming. There are babies in there. The mama and papa are flying in and out of the nest box faster than BP executives trying to shift the blame. Last night at dusk, which lasts so nice and long as we near the solstice, I took a huge stockpot of compost down to my worm bin. But to get there, I have to go through the back gate. Actually, I don’t. I could have gone around through the side door, but I thought I’d just lift the latch sooo quietly…and as I walked through I heard the soft whoosh of the chickadee leaving the nest and wondered if I’d done it again. If I’d scared the adult off the nest for the night and doomed the babies. If you don’t know what I am talking about, you can do one of two things: You can read my post “Bad hair color and roasted chickadees,” or you can just trust me. My life is an arrow, aimed at nurturing the wild in the city, but last summer I misfired and I have a karmic debt to the chickadee gods.

But they are back and I can hear at least one little baby in there, making his bid for the bug of the hour. The box is so close to the path of our life. It’s in a stupid place, one of the many mistakes I have and will make in this attempt to live in a finer way. But I will keep trying. When winter comes, I’ll move the box. But I want so much for this year’s nestlings to fledge. I want to look up from my kitchen sink and see one hop out into the crabapple branches, test his weight in the world and decide to fly. 

Happy Birthday Forest

A couple days ago, some jerk cut me off on the I-5 on-ramp. He was in an old, medium blue America sedan and he was bald. We were merging, but I was clearly ahead of him and he sped up. “Don’t be an asshole,” I said, as I floored it and my mommy van ripped just enough head of him to cut in before the ramp narrowed to one lane. I merged fast on to I-5, just to prove that I wasn’t going to cut him off and lollygag. To prove, really, that I was just as fast and aggressive as him. Then I felt a little disgusted with myself. Decided that I was over it. Imagined him, now coming up on the right, needing to get into my lane and how I would slow down and wave him in with a magnanimous, languid, maybe just a little bit sexy wave. I was feeling very Buddha. He came up on the right, his face contorted in rage and pressed to the glass, yelling at me. He was almost past me when my Buddha bubble popped and I flipped him off.

And then he slowed down. Dropped right back into my blind spot. I tried to see him in my rearview mirror, flicking my eyes so he couldn’t se me looking. My heart was thumping a little bit. Was he next to me? I looked in the fisheye in the side mirror. Yes. Right there. Pacing me. He pulled up a little. He had a bright yellow ear plug in his left ear, like one might wear at, say, a firing range. He dropped back again. I needed to merge right. I dropped speed fast, darted behind him then over. Then I lost him, merging right and exiting on Lakeview Blvd. But when I stopped at the sign at the bottom of the ramp, there he was. One car ahead of me. He turned right. I turned left. All the way to my writing group, I watched my rearview mirror. Did he turn around? I made a second turn. I imagined that he had my license plate number. I went inside. And all of this was different than it would have been two years ago. When the man in the blue sedan slowed, when he started pacing me, my first reaction was what it always was: “Fuck you. If you are coming after me, come on.” But right on the tails of that, like a new eraser over old soft lead, came this: “What about Forest?”

The day before, Forest had turned two. All day long, I sang Happy Birthday to him. Every one of the 27 different times , his face split wide open with the very first words. Last year, he was barely talking. This year he stared at my slice of Palermo pepperoni, gorgonzola and mushroom pizza with extra sauce and garlic crust. I could practically see his cogs turning. Then he looked at me and beamed and said “The steam is coming UP!”

He has changed so much. And he has changed me. Not just cured my macho death wishes, (although apparently this change is still making its way to my accelerator foot)  but softened me like meat tenderizer on a bee sting, and toughened me like fruit left long in the sun.

Now, he is two. I am almost 40. These 38 years that are between Forest and I will never change. They are an iron bar, separating us on the racetrack, forever holding us that much apart, and somewhere up there is a cliff, and I will go over first. Please, please, please Gods, let me go over first. I survived ten years of environmental politics like a daily vaccination of despair. I survived walking home along through San Francisco’s lower Haight every night after work, 2:30 or 3 am, smoothed out by the shot and beer back I got from my fellow bartender, walking past all those dark doorways with nothing but luck and my belief that a confident strut would unmark me as a target. I survived teaching myself to drive on the highway at 14, bored after school and later, driving so drunk on the dark Arizona roads that my best friend in the passenger seat braced both feet on the dash board.

“Am I swerving?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t tell if it’s me or the car.”

“Me neither,” I said, and we both laughed, alive with our stupid fearlessness. I am not fearless now. I don’t mean to be a downer, but I’ll tell you this: Back then I thought the worst thing that could happen was that I would die. Now I know that the worst thing is that I would survive Forest. 

"What about Forest?" 

This question is a new compass, a shift in my North Pole. It is the awful and wonderful power of this love and it just keeps getting bigger. Happy Birthday, Forest.  I love you so very, very much.