3 years
On Saturday, May 22, 2021, I take Gargantubaby, who is three and a half, to visit my parents in Evanston, Illinois. It's the first time we've all seen each other since January 2020, when GB was two and my parents came to San Francisco from Evanston and my brother and sister-in-law flew in from China.
SATURDAY
It's been long enough that my parents forget that when they pick me up from the airport, I sit in the backseat writing down everything they say.
They have an age-old dynamic where my mom tries to tell my dad directions, and Dad tries to quiet her with a dangerously calm, "Rose." She's never right, but she never stops trying to give him directions. It starts before we're even out of the airport, on our way to the elevator to the parking garage.
We're at the playground in Dolores Park. Gargantubaby is heading to the top of the tall slide, so I head for the bottom to watch him. I stop in the middle of the stairway, shaded by a tree. Above me, at the top, I see an adult woman: skinny black jeans, good shoes, black tank top, fashionable blue-and-white-striped mask, expensive sunglasses. She's waiting, amid the children, to go down the slide. Gargantubaby cuts in front of her, swinging under the railing.
When she makes a "what the hell" gesture at his little back, I know we're in trouble.
I haven't written at all about the process of writing a book and, now, the daily self-flagellation that is marketing and publicity. Every time I write the word "self-flagellation" (because in my life I have written that word a lot), I think about monks, and then I think about the duomo in Assisi, Italy, and the little room within it that has (they say) St. Francis's real hair shirt. I saw this duomo, and this shirt, in 2010 after I had hiked, quite tipsy at the beginning, from Spello, the next town to the south, through the Parco del Monte Subasio, thinking it was a half hour jaunt but realizing after I'd encountered quite a few other hikers who eyed my American sandals and American messenger bag and happy, carefree, unintelligent American attitude with disbelief and condescension that it was, in fact, five hours away. Thank god I always carry water. As too many of my stories end: I could have died.
A few things have happened since the last time I wrote. Yes, my book is coming out! Also, SJ and I got our first vaccinations; I started smoking cannabis; and the pets have been on a rampage of pooping, peeing, and barfing inside the house. I’m talking Every. Fucking. Day.
They must have a schedule. Like they must wake up early and consult with each other, the dog saying to the cat: "Do we have today covered? I pooped in the kids' room yesterday, so if today you could take over barfing on the rug Jenny bought in Oaxaca — extra points for getting the barf to splash UP onto the part of the quilt that's hanging down off the bed — I would really appreciate it."
A few days ago I texted my guru, the writer and artist Janet Manley (who has a newsletter that is the smartest, funniest, most original thing on the internet right now, plus she will write your living obituary):
Somehow, amid the everything, I get this nagging feeling that I'm not doing enough, that I could be working harder. WTF is that?
Notwithstanding a pandemic, two full-time jobs between me and SJ, one 3-year-old at home, one 11-year-old at home half the time and attending school remotely, 12 meals a day, a young cat who pees inside the house, a dying dog who pees inside the house, a house, a car, and a minivan in and on which things often break or malfunction and which mostly are dirty and untidy, plus an advice column, a blog, and another Large Project I will announce soon (MARCH 15!!!), I have the gnawing sense that I'm not working hard enough.
As Janet responded: WTF IS THAT I have it too!!
I have watched this video a thousand times. SJ keeps catching me watching it and saying, “Pretty pleased with yourself?”
I AM SO PLEASED WITH MYSELF. I CAN’T STOP LAUGHING.
It's New Year's Day in San Francisco. The parrots are back, squawking in the Canary Island date palms across the street. It's completely clear again, so from the top of our block we can see the Bay Bridge, Oakland, Alameda, and Mount Diablo in the distance. Yesterday the four of us chased the waves at Crissy Field, let the ocean air cleanse us of 2020.
I'm not going to say it was a shit year. I don't need to. But also, I can't say it. My son was two years old when this started, and now he's three. Since the beginning of his life—since I was in labor with him, when SJ was driving us to the Redwood City Kaiser at 11 p.m., when I had five contractions in the passenger seat of my car as he received text message after text message from an abusive person intent on trying to ruin the birth of his second child—external forces have been trying to wrest my attention from my son.
It's December in San Francisco. The "office" I share with SJ is the coldest room in the house, because for some goddamn reason the vent is not connected to the heater. San Francisco has pernicious, damp winter air, so I am bone-cold by midmorning.
It’s November in San Francisco. We’ve had our first rain, a light sprinkling just persistent enough that I moved a socially distanced backyard hang into the garage, where a few wonderful women sat six feet apart, wearing masks and drinking tea amid the drizzle, and talked nonstop for two hours.
It’s fall in San Francisco, which means heat waves and wildfires. Yet, during the morning and evening hours, the air is cooler and easier to bear.
It's long been known that engaging in routine physical activity is extremely important for promoting brain health and longevity.
COULD WE SAVE THESE ARTICLES UNTIL WE'RE ALL CLEAR OF A PANDEMIC THAT KEEPS US HOUSEBOUND