A Tour of San Francisco

I am visiting my sister with the boys at her home in the Dog Patch district of San Francisco.

Today, we take a tour of Chinatown before noon so we can see the fortune cookie factory in operation. We park the car several blocks away after looking for a space for over fifteen minutes. This is the first and least obvious lesson offered by urban life. Stowing the vehicle that got you here takes time and effort. (Good luck with that.)

The walk is a colorful one. Live fish slap around in deep trays, eyes bulging, as water is sprayed in to keep them alive. Fresh flowers, ripe and round citrus, green peppers and prickly golden fruit are mounded high in crates while men and women pick through them, talking, talking, talking in a language that is foreign to us. Trinidad and Sam turn their heads from side to side taking it all in.

"There are so many people!" says Sam.

"We'll have to take a left on Chaos before Jackson," says Trin.

"We're stopping here for coffee," says Robyn. We have one hour on the meter, most of Chinatown and half of Little Italy between us and the fortune cookie factory. Surely there's time for everything. We duck into the Italian bakery.

Yesterday, Sam was sick but slept and is now well. I'm fighting a cold and know I'd do better to eat my greens but... authentic Italian pastries? Hippie health must take a holiday. I buy a chocolate croissant, Sam gets a strawberry and cream danish and Trin has a hot cocoa. Robyn gets her coffee and a macaroon. It's all divine.

We walk on to Ross alley and discover our destination. It is a factory that appears to be composed of a 600 square foot room. Four women sit at stations where cookies slide off hot irons in round discs. The women grab a fortune, press it to a warm disc and bend the cookie around a string to fold it into shape. A sign tells me to pay fifty cents if I plan to take pictures. We give the man two dollars. He has been very generous with offering cooled flat cookie rounds our way. He nods graciously at my offer.

"How long has this place been here?" asks Robyn.

"Fifty year!" says the man.

"How long have you yourself worked here?" she asks a woman.

"One day!" says the woman. When we laugh, she looks flustered and asks us to talk to the man.

"Fifty year!" he repeats emphatically. She is clearly younger than that, but much can get lost in translation. Or perhaps she always gets the best fortunes?

Robyn digs for cash to buy a bag of "adult fortune cookies" with naughty fortunes inside. We agree to split the cookies. She hesitates, embarrassed to ask the man for them. He grins broadly and assures her that they are adult fortune cookies, chocolate and vanilla. We make a point to separate that bag from the one I buy for the kids.

We are tempted by Chinese candies and wooden swords on the way back to the car. We buy more candy than I have all year as I am suddenly nostalgic for edible rice wrapped gummy delicacies like the ones I ate as a child. The boys are in shock when they see what I've purchased. Is it tourism? Am I under the influence of my sister, or are the two of us (so rarely together) suddenly recreating our childhood to pass on to my boys in imported sweets?

We move the car and climb the hill to Coit tower on foot with our sugar highs in full swing. The boys look out over the bay in all directions. Only for a moment. Then they are fixated on the foreign coins that have been set on the outside sills of the locked windows. How did the coins get there? Who left them? Could they somehow squeeze their hands through the opening and take one, just one? More perhaps? Such beautiful foreign coins! The view is disabled by this novel diversion.

I stare out at the land around and walk the perimeter of the tower in a slow circle. Alcatraz island brings me back to a tour of the prison I took in seventh grade. The Marin hills remind me of Ken and his days playing the piano many years before I knew him. The boats remind me of so much water and the desire to command it -- boats from childhood, boats I was learning to sail, all dreams that lap in and out at me like the bay itself gently tugging at my heart.

With irritation, I hear the boys still discussing how they might get at the coins. The yearning in their voices rankles me. I express my frustration with their focus on the sill when so much beauty stretches beyond under a bright blue sky. But here I am, myself counting the tangible coinage of my past from the top of a tower so tall. What did I see that was new here? What am I learning from my view?

The boys and I distract each other from our perseverations. We shake ourselves into interacting with one other, with the cypress trees below whose tops are blown flat as if they'd painted the sky too roughly. I see my sister, tall and beautiful and quiet. We have been appreciating each other, seeing and hearing one another in longer stretches. This is something.

We descend the tower, each lost in our own thoughts. Maybe a view is just a view, and a vista point is a place to see what we have to let go of while we also celebrate what we've ascended. Perhaps the pinnacle offers us an opportunity to look down at our own expectations and the ways that we isolate ourselves from one another and the world.

And maybe, from that vantage point, I felt a little lost for a moment. All the nostalgia and fortunes in bagged cookies across the city could not save me from my own inner chaos as I ascended that place and sorted it out. It's all mine.

Perhaps the finding has to start with being lost somewhere.

Superhuman

Falling in love gives me superpowers deluxe. I hardly recognize myself under the cape.

In the glowing light of dawn when I should appear rumpled and haggard from lack of sleep, I turn my face to the light and receive it as my own personal blessing for the day. All is beautiful. The wrinkles fall out of my clothes, my eyelids, my memory, and I imagine that even my breath is not as bad as it might seem.

I wake the children with a song, and while I haven't been making the time to practice guitar (some things have to give), my voice rolls forward like liquid gold to dazzle them through the disgruntled waking hour. I cannot be shaken.

I sweep and vacuum the house in a snap before they have stumbled out, rubbing their eyes. My inner drummer keeps time at an ecstatic pace while I look with a fresh perspective at the pieces of furniture I haven't dusted in a year or more. The toaster oven needs a cleaning, inside and out. Had I scheduled it all, the tasks would be a drudgery or a bust. How could I get all of that done, find time to snuggle the boys, and pour a sensual email out to my new treasure?

I do chin-ups to impress Him and manage to complete four. In the rosy haze of rookie love he marvels that many men cannot do one. (He himself is an exception, but he rather uses his superpowers for dancing just now. I have to think to remember to breathe while I watch him.)

I create time! We talked for more than eight hours last night and we didn't get together until 5 p.m. It's a whole day on the calendar that I crafted between Saturday and Sunday. Let's call it Loveday.

I create space! My eyes train on him, and everything else melts away. I do not test this by attempting to cook dinner at the same time as being in love. Kitchen timers are not the sort of thing it is wise to neglect. Such an act could also contribute to spatial collapse on certain levels when dinner appears charred and less than rosy. So ... oh well! Superpowers offer clarity: Dinner or my undying attention -- one or the other!

I see into the future (or just think I do)! And it's swell.

I see into the past: My vision is 20/20, and it all makes sense. That's how we got here!

Best of all, I have patience beyond belief, stretching out past the hems of my shimmering, heart-shaped cape. (Yes, it really flies! But not while I'm in it.) I see the best in everyone, and all is forgiven.

Christmas 2011

The human experience is one way the Earth experiences herself, a friend told me.

If that is so, then the Christmas experience does not belong to us at all, but rather we belong to it.

Seda, the boys, and I are all home together this year with no intention of leaving. We go out only to walk the dog. Our outer story is sedate, predictable even. Inside my head and heart, there's a storm -- hot and cold fronts butting heads. The rain comes down in torrents when I least expect it, often before I can turn  away to hide the tears.

I did not focus on gift-giving this year. The kids knew this and did not expect much. They were already content with money they'd received from relatives when an unexpected windfall of gifts happened our way: a six foot by three foot wooden trunk of Lego, a basketball hoop and several games from a family up the street. Strangely, the family is in crisis, so the gift is bittersweet in the receiving. I bow to that with awe, appreciation, and love. My heart is again broken open.

The greatest gift I receive is an agreement that my children will be mentored by a young man I deeply respect. This gift is almost more than I can take in. It is one of the few things I've had trouble offering the boys in the way of support I think they need. I am thrilled.

I open a gift this morning of a necklace -- a talisman, really -- made by a friend. She crafted it for herself last year and now feels it should go on to me. It is intended to be a reminder of wholeness and courage in challenging times. I hold it in my hand until it envelopes my warmth. We hold each other.

At mid-day, I read aloud to Seda a chunk of Herman Hesse's novel, Siddhartha. To my surprise and delight, both children set aside the new Pokemon cards they have gifted each other and come to the table to listen. They sit rapt until the end of the reading. They do not discuss it with Seda and I beyond an observation that it was interesting, but when they wander away, they walk slowly and quietly watching the floor. Could I receive a sweeter gift?

We cuddle together and watch the movie "Elf." It is much more funny and heart-warming than I had expected it to be. I am touched by the music in it, too, and my face is streaked with tears when the credits roll.

Trinidad unwraps an unexpected gift from Hiawatha, a friend of Ken's who has adopted us beyond Ken's departure to Key West. Trinidad receives a plasma ball ("not a child's toy" warns Hiawatha) which he has always admired and wished for during the hours spent at H's parties. I am touched by the power of a relationship (mine and Ken's) to shape one's world, and even the world of one's children. Sam receives a glow-in-the-dark Science kit from H, and Trinidad wheels and deals until he is the one concocting glow-in-the-dark bouncy balls and light up jelly beads and stars well into the night.

I melt in the evening, prone in child's pose on the kitchen floor after a discussion with Seda about Jesus. She grieves that so much violence happens in his name. I agree, and still I am troubled that this holiday which was originally a solstice celebration now celebrates his birth -- a decision (including a likely fabricated birthdate) made by the church some time ago to redirect a pagan culture into Christianity. I doubt that Jesus would himself approve, and I am sad to think how many decisions like this made by Church hierarchy have brought confusion and suffering to our world. That aside, I appreciate the opportunity to pay my respects to Jesus Christ, and I make my peace with that alone tonight.

Forgiveness, I decide, is not usually a complete and singularly sweeping action. It is instead the calculated effort of lifting rocks and logs from the river flow of love through one's heart. It takes time, and the current changes course to navigate the obstacles that remain. I am removing them one by one. I am forgiving.

At nine p.m., I take a glass of red wine in a flask and the dog on a leash, and I walk to the park. I stand under a lamp post alone and sing Christmas carols until I can't feel my fingers anymore. I sing for my mother who wanted to go out and sing a few carols last year, only few days before her death. I hold the caroling book I compiled for her then. I know she would appreciate this: wine, dog, and song. A high note in "Silent Night" starts the neighborhood dogs barking, and I strike out for home with my breath curling in clouds around me.

It is more than I can fully integrate, this day, and I know it. My eyes burn with grief in celebration.

Snapshots, Nearly Solstice

I wake up and study voice and guitar until my fingers and throat are feeling worn. I'm fighting a cold again. This music thing is a marathon before me, and I only just got the shoes. Beginner mind is supposed to be refreshing and insightful, I think. But my mind is preoccupied with mourning. I write to a friend and tell her all the things I think of doing in my weakest moment, which is now. I feel better having said them.

"I can't think of what to write next in this story!" Sam shouts. "I just can't."
"Sit with it," I tell him. "It's Spirit coming through you. Just quiet your mind, open and relax. It's all there." I wonder why I can't open and quiet like this in my moments of despair. I think I might be peeking through some sort of tear in the fabric now, because I do hear my words and wonder at them. I am not alone in the struggle because we are all trying to sit with what is while what's next rolls in. So much uncertainty.

I suddenly cry hard in the kitchen and both boys come to comfort me. I miss my Mom. It's Christmas without her. I sob and sob. Trinidad tells me in his young man voice to let it through, it's all right. He rubs my back. I see their care for me as a reflection of mine for her and I cry harder. Sam tells me to take my time, everything else can wait. Sit down. I can do nothing else. When I am done, I get us all some chocolate. We agree that it is good.

I am sitting on a chair in the kitchen, wearing an apron and holding my guitar. I am practicing Ode to Joy over and over until I'm not sure I like it anymore. The dog sits at my feet and stares up at me as if I were Jesus. I wonder at her taste in idols. The pressure cooker hisses above my melody.

All of this is inextricable. How can who I am be anything but what I do in this season of my life?

To Work with the Dead

The moon is not a difficult thing to love. Even behind a cloud, it is soft in its gaze, always poised at the edge of its seat looking down on me. I see it tonight, and I am moved by its patience, its ever-presence, its spirit in my world.

Sometimes, I forget it hanging there. There are weeks that I do not go outside at night. I bristle against the cold, the damp. Sometimes I forget that even in the rain, the moon sits it out, waiting. When I see nothing but darkness where the moon should be, that pale golden globe holds its place in the sky, singing its silent moonlight song. Even in total darkness, it does not forget its purpose.

I wish I was so steady in my way. I wish that the cosmos had gifted me a heart that trusted light to come and come again, stretching across the darkest canyons of my love-in-waiting. I wish I could touch the stardust in me now, know that I am spinning, spinning, spinning for good reason. All for the blessing of darkness in light.

The trees stand solemnly still in the sky tonight, bare bones lifted high into the mist. I am here beside them, my cheeks chilling as I sweep the last of the leaves up from the driveway. I have borne the rest away to my garden where they blanket the cold feet of naked bushes and trees. Now I stand in the dark, afraid to go inside and return to my human existence.

Here, I am cool and wet like the leaves themselves, tall and dark like the willow. I, too, am waiting for spring. I stand awhile in the rose arbor. I pause to allow the experience to be, this waiting and watching upon entering one space as I leave another. I can go back, I can always go back. The willow laughs at my observation. She doesn't see any going back. She just sees me under the arbor.

I make this human gate, this threshold for transformation. I make it for myself. It is my axis to turn on. I pray for the light to be remembered in me. I receive the damp offerings of earth and sky. This is my home.

I am always reminded of these truths that run far deeper than me when I move so many leaves. It is always a blessing to work with the dead.

In Honor of What

I bought myself some new dancing shoes, and tonight, I took them out for a spin.

Reentry into the ballroom scene is not so very difficult in most ways. I find my cubby, stash my cycling boots, and slip on my new jazzy black slippers. I look around not-so-obviously at the selection of potential partners while they look not-so-obviously at me.

I remember how this works. New fish in the pond are the first to be caught. Often enough, they are also tossed back when -- oops! -- they forget the steps to the west coast swing. Never tossed mid-song. Well, almost never; I think it only happened to me twice. But at the end of a song, you can feel your partner's disappointment. He wears it like a leaden yoke, and it's painful for him to fully raise his head to look at you politely as a gesture of goodbye. You must pardon my masculine assumption here (the "he"); all of my women dancing partners I've had to invite personally.

Okay, so I am perched on a step, prepared to be caught. Snap! It happens. A swing dance first. My favorite, and not too hard to piece together. Then, something called a "Night Club" follows, which sounds more like a drink than a dance. "I don't really know this one," I say, smiling sweetly.

My partner takes me out, a fine lead, and I pick up the dance more quickly than I thought I would. The first time I get the basic steps without tripping over him, he nods and says, "Okay, now let's try something different."

Oh, right. Just when I get the basic down for the first time? Now we're switching it up? So we try something different. After a couple of turns, I get that, too. He is delighted and jumps into a new move which leaves me criss-crossed on the wrong side of his arms. He looks at me sideways and says, "Oh, don't worry. It's probably the hardest move in this dance."

Excuse me? That's supposed to be reassuring? What makes you think that's such a great idea, I wonder, trying out your most difficult move when I've barely got my feet moving in step with you? Brilliant. I am set for success.

One older gentleman whose name, Helmut, is embroidered on his official ballroom dancing sweatshirt, tells me under no uncertain terms that a woman must follow and the man is totally in charge. Modern women, he says, have a hard time with this. I wonder if he thinks I am intentionally trying to gum up his grace in order to bolster my feminine independence. I look at him cock-eyed. "Is that supposed to be a hint?" I ask. His confidence ebbs, and the lecture ends.

They keep asking me to dance. Each time, I warn them that I haven't danced much in the last decade. Some believe me and take it achingly slow. Others think I'm being humble. If they are a strong lead, I keep up. One fellow just a little older than me learns quickly that my warning especially applies to the tango. He walks me through it counting aloud. We do okay.

Then he starts talking to me. My lips work better than my legs, so they take over, and my legs fall off. Well, not entirely, but it is kind of a drag for both of us. It takes him a full turn around the floor to understand the problem and stop asking me questions. He then has to go back to telling me which foot to move: left, right, left, right.

Okay. Good again. Then he asks me where I dance when I'm not dancing here. Ummm.... really? Aren't you the guy who just taught me my right from my left? "Because there's a dance tomorrow night at the Eagles Club," he tells me. I say I'm going to the concert of a friend of mine instead. He looks disappointed. The dance is over.

One man asks if I do the Silver Waltz, and I tell him that I did once. He tries me, and low and behold! The feet remember. I recall as if it was yesterday practicing this dance while walking my dog down the bark-o-mulch path at Alton Baker park. (Yes, there was trouble with the leash.) I am so surprised to remember the steps that I almost share my celebration. Then I recall how well talking helped my tango, and I keep my mouth shut.

Another man asks me to dance. "Err... what is it?" I ask. "A merengue. You can't mess it up," he tells me. Now there's someone who's been watching, I think. We take the floor, and I do remember how to look sexy squishing grapes with my feet. This man is charmed by my flair. He asks me to dance the next waltz. For some reason, my legs don't go with his anymore, and he is irritated. It's simply a progressive waltz, he says, but I can't seem to remember which leg goes when. I suspect he thinks I'm a great dancer who is disabled just for him, just to ruin his waltz. Perhaps it is so. He gives me a very sour look. I widen my eyes and smile.

A fellow insists on teaching me the West Coast Swing. I appreciate his patience, actually, and his counting aloud. He asks me to teach him the rumba, which I manage to do, just barely. I tell him that I'm rusty because it's my first full night dancing in a decade. "Oh!" he says. "In honor of what?"

In honor of what? How do I answer that? "Transition," I say and look away, hoping he doesn't ask more.

"What kind of transition?" he asks. This is officially not small-talk. This man is fired.

I look at him blankly. One-two-three, one-two-three. Why have I not danced? Transition of my husband into a woman? Transition in and out of two more relationships following? Neither of them rooted, and never a real space to be single, or at least singular, in between...why have I not danced?

It's a transition, I think, in honor of What. Just as he said it. But that's not the pat sort of answer that's allowed on the dance floor.

Nevertheless, it is worth a new set of shoes and an evening of laughter, missteps, and sweet memories lived aloud. In honor of What.

The Saints Preserve Us!

Opening line of our homeschooling day: "All right, boys. The electricity has gone out. It won't be back. And I'm not your mother."

Sam looked horrified. "I'm some stranger who just walked in off the street," I told him quickly. "I heard you grew tomatoes this year and that your mom used to can, so I'm hoping you can teach me." The wheels began to turn.

"What do you need to can?" I asked.

"Jars. The jar pot, tomatoes," said Trinidad.

"What are the dangers of canning?" I asked.

"Broken jars, getting burned," said Sam.

"What about the long term dangers?" I asked.

"Poisoning!" they said in tandem.

"Right. And what could cause that?"

"Bacteria!" said Trin.

"Yup," I said. "That particular bacteria is called 'botulism.'"

"Botulism? No way. I thought that was a religion."

So went the Socratic lesson on canning today, heavy with sixteen quarts of tomatoes that the boys harvested and cut up from our garden. As we stewed over the details, the rich, red sauce simmered down to a precious seven quarts. I helped stir the pots as we discussed what could be a hospitable environment to various bacteria and what inhibits their growth.

Then, we went a different direction with our preservation and lacto-fermented five quarts of cucumbers that Trin and Sam picked in the garden. All of this with only some instruction (and many questions) from me! They peeled the garlic that we'd harvested in July and plunked the white bulbs into jars with proper measurements of dill, mustard seed, salt and whey. They added water and voila! A work of art that feeds the family. A living food that fends off botulism with its own vitality!

A lesson plan you can eat.