Last week was a low point professionally and personally; hence, there is no God. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up, at least.
Claire to Jeremy, on the phone: We need to go to Australia. So my mummy can see her mummy, and be happy.
On Friday Salome said: “I love Claire. But this whole Why? thing she has going? Totally exhausting.”
It’s Sunday. Claire, Julia and I are heading home from Yerba Buena on the J.
C: I want my pony bag!
Her handbag with a pony in it is clipped to my diaper bag. I unclip it and give it to her.
C: I want the clip!
R: You may not have it.
C: Whyyyy?
R (Oh God, not this again): Because so much depends upon it.
C: Whyyyyyyyy?
R: so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Pause.
C: What was that?
R: A poem.
C: Poe-wim?
R: Yes. Would you like to hear another one?
C: Yes.
I do Yeats’ Epitaph, Blake’s The Tyger and a little bit of Full Fathom Five, but she is most taken with The Tyger and has to have it repeated 90,000 times. We do a little textual deconstruction, then discuss the nature of poetry and its relationship to memory.
R: … so a good poem can make us remember and feel things.
C: Why?
R: Well, we don’t really know everything about how language and the human brain work together. Maybe when you’re big you could be an English professor or a cognitive psychologist or a neuroscientist, and find things out.
Pause.
C (gravely): I want to find things out.
There has been a thorny bug. Jeremy said that things were spooking in the hyperbloviator, before his disenfranchising tools could take effect. I think that’s what he said.
So I took the girls again this weekend, my eleventh straight day of being at the office and/or single-handedly wrangling Fitzhardinge: TNG so that Jeremy can delve into code. Oh, and there’s potty-training afoot, so it’s close and dirty work. Claire has a slight blister and so cannot walk, so I’ve been carrying them both, Jules in the Ergo and Claire on my hip. We look like a giant ambulatory mushroom.
When I got home yesterday and Jeremy said he hadn’t fixed the bug yet, I nearly cried. Objects were moved strenuously from place to place. Imprecations were mooted. Nevertheless I rounded everyone up again this morning, at least everyone non-core to the disempowerment, and we all walked up to Liberty Cafe and had quiche (Julia likes quiche!) and went to the playground, where Claire snuggled next to me on the bench rather than play.
And then Jeremy arrived and said he’d expurgated the snood, and lo there was much rejoicing and the children sang songs of praise!
On Tuesday he’s flying to Canada. God have mercy.
I was very grumpy. Jeremy almost-forgot that it was date night, and Blue Plate seemed to want us to wait for hours and hours. Then the host came and asked, diffidently, if we wanted to eat in the garden. We did.
It’s one of the prettiest places in San Francisco. Reminded me of Frock Advisory Council clubhouse Razor’s Edge in its heyday, all brick paving and tiled walls and flowering shrubs between the tables. A fountain sang. The fog blew overhead. We had pinot noir, lamb and sardines, chicken and steak, chocolate cake and coffee. We talked. There was chemistry.
I walked home, drunk and joyous.
I wanted Salade Nicoise. We didn’t have any spinach, so I distressed some kale in olive oil with lemon juice and red chili flakes. Threw it in the oven to sulk with diced roast potatoes. Added dismemberments of yellow heirloom tomatoes, kalamatta olives and hard boiled eggs.
Yesterday as I was walking to lunch at Medicine Eat Station (mango and pear nigiri, steamed vegetables with peanut sauce and organic germinated organic rice) a tall man walking past me suddenly ducked and made a grab at my handbag.
I turned on him snarling like all the wolf-bitches on earth. My anger astonished me. It also surprised Jack, who had only mugged me in fun and who thought for a second that I was going to rip his throat out.
I called Salome. “Jack mugged me!” “I know,” she said. “He was on the phone to me at the time.”
In the car, on the way home from the wedding:
“The world is scary
All the days
The world is scary
All the times.”
I had two gorgeous days with the girlies this weekend: Lake Temescal with ducklings, Morrisa and Miranda, Jamey and Rowan, Salome and Milo, then a date with my husband – A Scanner Darkly, which we both loved, and agneau and bavette and tarte tatin at Cafe Claude; then the World Cup Final at Dolores Park with Ian, who Claire greeted with a hug, Burger Joint for lunch, coffee at Ritual, a nap, and finally dinner with the Jaffe-Tsangs and Dana.
I’m very nostalgic for my life as it is right now. Julia’s downy hair, the teething rash on her chin, her overjoyed grin. The way Claire says no: “Neaauu!” Bebe’s silky summer coat, and the kibble she leaves in strategic caches around the house. Flowers on our jacaranda. Handbags, backpacks, unopened mail, nappy bags, library books and nineteen dozen shoes cluttering up our hallway. Dusty car. My bleached-blonde hair growing out. Funky smell in the fridge from weeks-old Point Reyes Blue.
Claire must be enjoying herself too. Here’s song 2.0:
“The world is not scary
All the days
The world is not scary
All the times.”
This working out thing? Is not really working out for me. You’d be amazed how completely I suck at it. I have no abs. None. Below my ribs and above my hips, there’s just a sort of meaty network cloud. Nor do I run, qua run. I shuffle around Holly Park like that potato farmer who ran from Sydney to Melbourne in gumboots. And who was declared a national hero for it. Why?
I am not now, nor will I ever be, one of Australia’s-sports-men-and-women. Yesterday morning dying middle-aged looked pretty okay. Tomorrow, too, I expect.
I’m the poster child for people living with laziness.
We hiked up the hill after dark for the holiday thingy, whatever. Jack was wearing the black wool hat from Banana Republic that Salome forced me to give him in exchange for their pine bench, which now graces my bay window. Jack is a curmudgeon, so we like to taunt one another.
J: My head is pleasantly warm.
R: You don’t find it itchy?
J: A little.
R: Maybe fabric softener.
J: You said that on purpose, didn’t you? You know I hate fabric softener.
S: And anti-static dryer sheets.
R: Oh, right. Jeremy bought some rinse-aid for the dishwasher the other day. I asked what it did. He said, It’s a thing you spend money on.
J: EXACTLY.
R: He said there was a special place in the dishwasher for it, so he needed it.
J: I HATE that.
C: I don’t like fireworks! I want them out of the sky!
The fog cleared and Bernal Hill was thronged with neighbours, a superb natural amphitheatre. We could see Oakland’s and Berkeley’s fireworks as well as San Francisco’s, plus the alarming and unauthorized displays in north and south Darkest Mission, not to mention the Excelsior. The whole city was exploding with joy.
In the Australian left of my youth you had to hate America. It was a condition of entry. You had to rationalize away the fact that Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky and so on are American. I suppose that was considered a useful exercise in denial. I’ve lived here eight years and like any rational person I am terrified of the vice president and Prairie Muffins and extraordinary rendition and what have you, but you know what? It’s more complicated than that. This country is something. It’s impossible to ignore.
The show was over.
C: Where did the fireworks go?
J: Rachel! Your head looks cold.
R: No, I keep it warm with my thoughts. My intellect is radiant, and so forth. Don’t hit me!
J: No no, I was just moving over to listen to your ravings!
S (laughing pitilessly): “Don’t hit me!”
R: I’m a poster child for people living with cowardice.
S: You’re stoic.
R: I’ve touched so many lives!
Marin was the Platonic ideal of a county fair.
S: How was the carousel?
R: The merry-go-round?
S: Yes, the carousel.
R: In English, we call it the merry-go-round.
S: WHATEVER.
R: Well, the mechanism that made the horses go up and down hadn’t been oiled, so it gave this horrible jerk at the top and bottom of its range. And the lights were out and three of the horses were too damaged to ride and the music actually came from someone’s boombox… it was AWESOME.
The carnie stuff reminded me of the funfair that used to come to The Entrance when we were kids. The whole experience was adorable. We arrived early enough to avoid the crowds; the views across the lake to the Frank Lloyd Wright Gattaca building were utterly gorgeous; we were charmed by llamas, Morgans and Jersey cows. You could tell it was a county fair by the smell of the piglets. You could tell it was Marin because we had jambalaya for lunch.
In other news, teh InterWeb is a series of tubes.
R: No, Claire, you have to whisper.
C: Why?
R: Cian’s grandma is marrying her friend Asa Crow.
C: Why?
R: So they can be husband and wife. Like Daddy and me.
Sunshine, pink roses, beautiful bridesmaids, glowing bride. Someone, not me, dabs her eyes.
C: My husband will be like Cian.
Dinner at Chenery Park’s kids’ night, with Andrew, Kathy and Martha. I had lamb with spinach and potato gratin, and a bourbon bread pudding. Sazerac and pinot noir. OH my god.
Hedonism can be read as aggression. There’s a growing movement among my friends to discredit my blog. Danny and Quinn threaten to go to restaurants after me, and publish: “It wasn’t that good!”
But it was, my scurvy dogs, yes it was.
I have made every 9am workout since the switch. On Friday, Charlotte sent us to run around the top of Bernal Hill.
“I want you to imagine yourself as a great athlete,” she said.
At last, something I can do!
Rahab Charmian, private eye, ran like a deer, all brown muscle and pale crop of hair. Olympic athlete, Pulitzer- and Booker-prize-winning novelist and real estate genius, she made the steep hill seem negligible, even amiable. The eyes of men and women followed her, only to be cast down by a glint of gold from her wedding ring – a single flash from the fires of Mount Doom.
Just when you think she’s absolutely perfect …she gets jewelier.
Thank you very much! I’ll be here all week!
I signed up for the 6.15am class with Coach Charlotte, thinking, I don’t know why, that I could reverse a lifetime of Not Being A Morning Person by sheer Force Of Will. After I’d missed seven of the first eight sessions, I gave up and asked to switch to 9am. Had my first late-morning workout today.
I’ve been very fit in the past, but only anaerobically, when I was riding competitively and teaching. I’ve never had much upper-body strength, and I have no cardio fitness at all. I loathed my high school PE teacher, your standard-issue sadomasochistic pervert. I’ve never set foot in a gym. So Charlotte’s basically starting from scratch.
Halfway through the first session I was wheezing like an asthmatic, and I wondered why it felt so completely different from high school PE, why I was in pain but not actually suffering, and then I realized: I’m not scared any more. From the age of about seven until I started taking Zoloft, just after my 32nd birthday, I was terrified most of the time. I didn’t even know it, not really, I just thought other people were braver than me. Post-vitamin-Z, I’ve lost my driving phobia, flying phobia and social phobia, so it stands to reason that I’m no longer afraid of getting out of breath.
The best thing about Workout on the Hill, though, is not the workout – which feels fabulous as soon as you stop – it’s the hill. I did my bicep curls looking down over Candlestick to the bay. My step-ups, I watched mayflies hovering under the eucalyptus trees.
Die old is a geek meme right now, reflecting the fact that so many of us are thirtysomething with kids. In my miserable teens and twenties, it never occurred to me that my doctor would actually find out what was wrong with me and fix it, or that I would get married to the most amazing person in the world and that he would like me and laugh at my jokes, or that I would have kids at all, let alone revel in them. I get happier and happier over time, even as the glaciers melt. I’m going to buy a Prius and live to be a hundred and twenty.
Through the curved stairwell window of the apartments on San Jose Avenue, Claire got a look at the twin spires of St Paul Church in Noe Valley. Ever since, she’s been demanding to go to church.
You may imagine how this makes me roll my eyes.
Far be it from me to stand in the way of my preschooler’s blossoming spirituality. Sunday morning Salome and I took the lot of them to Glide. Whatever your position on the existence or otherwise of invisible superheroes in the sky, Glide is worth visiting. They provide food, health care, housing, training and employment, counseling and HIV tests to anyone who needs them; also, they have a kick-ass gospel choir and band.
I know I said I’d shut up about $HorribleSuburbanChurch, but this is relevant: the last year I was there, Vic began one of his more pointlessly stupid crusades. Ian Marrett, who ended up marrying my sister, brought along a beautiful old spiritual: “I want Jesus to walk with me.”
Vic announced that we weren’t allowed to want Jesus to do anything more for us – hadn’t Jesus done enough? – and that we’d have to sing the doctrinally correct, if ridiculous and unmetrical, “Jesus wants me to walk with him.”
(It sounds like an idiotic argument and it was, but there was a serious point to it. Does Jesus care more about one very strict, very narrow interpretation of a set of Greek texts of dubious origin, or does he care more about what is beautiful and right? Of course I think he’s long dead and has no opinion either way, but any God worth its salt should be an inspirer of great art – the Hagia Sophia, say – and not of evil and derivative crap like the Left Behind books. Otherwise, what’s the point? There’s a whole ‘nother conversation about C.S. Lewis and Hamlet – do you really want to live in a universe in which tragedy is meaningless? No, really? – and another about the extent to which American evangelicals grotesquely overrate Lewis, and yet another about how in $HorribleSuburbanChurch even Lewis and John Donne were considered scarily subversive and not really worth reading, especially by young women – only the Bible was worth reading – but suffice it to say that by Christ, I’m glad I left.)
Naturally, Glide launched into the old, beautiful and yearning version of “I want Jesus…” just to make clear to me that this is not $HorribleSuburbanChurch. Naturally I blubbed, and within seconds an usher was offering me Kleenex. That’s what I call service.
Claire thought church was fine. She’s walking again, by the way, which is a huge relief to those of us who both love her and are tired of carrying her.
Sunday evening we had vague dinner plans with the Murgisteads, and Salome wanted to visit the Target at Serramonte Mall. For some reason we thought it would be hilarious and ironic to have dinner in the ‘burbs. Well, you can picture what happened next: hungry, desperate hipsters appalled that a Food Court could close at 7pm; a 75-minute wait at the Elephant Bar. We ended up at Denny’s.
“What, if anything, is edible?” I asked, reasonably enough I thought.
“I’m not sure I want you ragging on my people’s culture,” said Salome. “I feel defensive.”
“I’m not criticizing. I’m just… surprised. The vegetable options on the children’s menu include Teddy Grahams.”
Jack said: “Isn’t it reassuring to be reminded that we belong in the city?”
Claire devoured her Mac and Cheese. Denny’s gave us free coupons for bowling, so our hilarious ironic hipster outings aren’t over yet. Jeremy was up till 3am trying to digest his sandwich.
America!
Raven IMed me: You still awake?
Me: Yes.
Raven: I went to the JBoss party, top floor of the Rio. Schweet.
Me: I had a glass of pinot and read my library book. Guy at the next table tried to pick me up. Typical night in Vegas.
Raven: Hahahaha! Moms are cool.
Everyone should have a friend like Jonathan, whose hobby is throwing ever-more-astonishing parties. Husband, baby and I spent the weekend on a mountaintop in the Ventana wilderness, drinking cocktails.
Preschooler stayed home and had a sleepover with all her friends. By all accounts, she enjoyed herself enormously, yet when we got home she sat on my lap stiff as an ironing board, and sulked.
“Don’t talk to me.”
“Can I read?”
“No.”
“Can I give you a kiss?”
“No!”
“Are you mad because we went away?”
“Yes.”
I left my phone on the charger all day yesterday and forgot to check my messages until about five. There was one from Salvatore saying that Claire had had a fall in the playground and was limping. I was with my mother that afternoon thirty years ago when a stranger came to tell us that Alain had been hit by a car and broken his leg. I’ll always remember the look on her face when she picked up her handbag and left: pure unadulterated mama bear. I think that look was on my face as I took the train home last night.
Claire’s foot was still swollen and couldn’t take her weight. We bundled her off to St Luke’s, where her leg and foot were thoroughly X-rayed and where a lovely pediatrician asked whether maybe an elephant had stepped on it? As far as anyone can tell, it’s just a bad sprain. Claire is resplendant in an Ace bandage. It’s still pretty painful, and she had a bad night.
All the same, we’re the only parents I know who made it to age three-and-a-half before their first trip to the ER. I offer yet more thanks to the unseen for our undeserved good luck.
Claire’s latest crush is on Django.
“My dragon’s name is Zeaman,” she revealed.
Actually, she has three dragons: “Alfie, Matilda and Zeaman.”
Lest you think this is greedy, cousin Kelly has four dragons: “Ronin, Kinnon, Lunnon and Channon.”
There’s more.
“Cousin Ross’s dragon’s name is Hizzon Kiss Husband Orange-juice Hizzon.
“Unky Al’s dragon’s name is Hizzal Yummy Hug Bear Hizzal.
“Aunty Sarah’s dragon’s name is Hizzair Kiss Ouch Honey Cham.
“Uncle Max’s dragon’s name is Hizzax Baa Da Far La Na La Na Na Na. Wait! That’s too many names!”
We have hot water. Jets of it, gushing from the wall. In the nick of time, because I have my annual cold. All hail our plumbers!
They put our beautiful old brass shower back up, too.
preoccupations