Parlez vous Mandarin?
Marriage for me is a lovely chaotic collision of things, some physical, some emotional, some financial. We're constantly down-sizing our stuff, giving away to charities and such, and looking to consolidate. We don't need two answering machines, two tape players, or two too many gray slacks.
Money is the exception to this rule - we're putting our two dollars together and hoping they make more. Really guys, go for it - be fruitful and multiply, you lovely little greenbacks.
Our bank's ATM machine, reflecting polygot San Francisco, speaks to us in four languages: Chinese, Russian, Spanish and English. Having visited Russia as well as several Spanish-speaking lands, I keep wanting to choose them at least once and see what happens. But it's an actual binding financial transaction, and I don't think Jane the banker, no matter how aimable her personality, is going to give me back our money if I accidentally send it to Khazikstan.
I can envision the conversation with Richard now. This is not a man who wants his money floating around all the X-stans. This is a man who wants to know his check to the grocer clears with a bit of cushion.
Him: "Babe, how much money do we have in the bank?"
Me: "Before or after we helped topple a tribal warland?"
Judge Wapner: "We rule in favor of the husband."
Salt Marshes and Mud Flats
Head east from The City over one of those long, tall bridges, and you come to the East Bay, home to everything from the Oakland As and Mayor Jerry Brown, to these marvelous tidal washes full of birds, squirrels, fish, and walking paths.
Back before everything came in vacuum-sealed bags, when agriculture was more of a cohesive, daily endeavor for most communities, salt was gathered from these flats. The ocean's tide would surge into the fresh water bay, including these low-lying areas of dense mud and marsh. When the tide receding back to the ocean, the some of the sea's salt would be left behind and harbested by local residents.
These days, most salt comes from the inscrutable grocery store, and the old salt flats are a birder's paradise. We hiked around the wildlife preserve yesterday, map and camera in hand, as birds, fish and field rodents thrived around us.
Someone is still enjoying the salt.
Ask not for whom
the bell tolls, it tolls for my Nishiki.
This is not like "My Sharona." No, this is something much finer, a far, far better thing.
This is my old road bike.
So, when you really love your car and your bike, you keep them, you nurture them, and you make life-long relationships with mechanics.
I look for in mechanics what other people look for in lovers, rabbis, coffee baristas -- I look for warm understanding, a nurturing spirit, the ability to to work miracles with their hands.
My first new relationships in SF have been with mechanics. Manuel is in that probationary period with the Pathfinder... so far, so good, he might win a customer for life. And Peter is off probation with the Nishiki. Peter is my bike mechanic.
The old bicycle, which was old when I got it third-hand maybe ten years ago, came to The City in the moving van with the piano and assorted baggage. Somewhere along the route, a rogue shelving unit broke free and pierced the back wheel. The tire was pinched flat and a spoke was snapped in two.
A neighbor sent us to the Sports Basement, on the northern edge of the Presidio. I met Peter, and he began to speak consoling and painful truths about the bike. He fixed it and breathed a little new life into it, and didn't charge me much at all, but still the bell is tolling, and the Nishiki is not long for these hills.
The main problem is the chain and related gear assembly. Over the years, chains and gears change to continue to fit each other, warping in response to pressure and wear. So now, my old chain only fits my old gears, and vice versa.
There's a great truth here about human relationships and human systems, but back to my bike. When the chain breaks - and on these hills it will - both the chain and the gears and all the accompanying stuff will have to be replaced. This is a $300 piece of open heart surgery.
Peter looked at me kindly: I know, he said, I love my bike, too. I can help you salvage some of the parts. But once your bike costs $300 to fix, and it's 20 years old and will only break down again, it's time to get a new bike.
So, lunch time today was spent picking up the bike. The shop is less than ten minutes away. I drove down to the Sports Basement and picked it up. Peter said, Ride it around the block, or around Chrissy Field, and make sure it's fine before you take it home.
So although I was wearing lace-up hiking boots and blue jeans - not the latest approved cycling gear - I jumped on and went across the street to Chrissy Field.
CF is the old landing strip for the old post (the Presidio). It was christened in 1921 for a young airman who left the field one day flying to the East Coast, and crashed and died en route. It's one of the flattest places in San Francisco, with a little beach on the bay side of the Golden Gate. As you ride along the bike path at Chrissy Field and look out across the beach, to your left is the bridge, in front is Alcatraz, and to the right is the City.
The bike seemed to work fine, but I hear those bells, and I'm preparing myself for the inevitable end of the affair. But my mechanic will be there.
In a rut?
So you head north over the Golden Gate to Marin, you snake along winding two-lane roads in a northwesterly direction, and about an hour or so later you arrive at Point Reyes National Seashore.
Along the way, you pass some of the most expensive real estate in the country, as well as farms and ranches from the 1800s that make delicious cheese and harvest organic produce.
The smell is clean and clear - even the cow manure approaches pleasant as an odor. Some folks came here in Vanagons in the 60s and 70s to tune in, turn on and drop out. The nouveau riche got here a little later, driving Lexi and BMWi. There are size restrictions on the houses and lots, plenty of horses, and the nicest animal shelter I've ever visited. I've heard that Marin is rich, white and snobby, but I haven't experienced that yet. (Still in the honeymoon, he whispers over my shoulder.)
Back to the park. We left the Pathfinder (13 yrs old and now reserved for trips -- city transportation is often boots and buses) at a trail head, shrugged on backpacks laden with wine and cheese (we know our priorities) and headed uphill.
Tule Elk were grazing peacefully on the hillsides, although ranger signs warned us to stay away as the elk are in rutting season. I didn't see any rutting. I saw a little antler rubbing, some yawning, occasional grass eating -- and a lot of sitting. Maybe they're just in a rut.
Hawks swooped overhead, waves crashed on beaches and against the rocky cliffs, and the wine was cold and clear, like the day.
Reprint from the Times
November 15, 2005
Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials
To avoid having to account for his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the intelligence. He's tried to share the blame, claiming that Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as President Bill Clinton. He's tried to pass the buck and blame the C.I.A. Lately, he's gone on the attack, accusing Democrats in Congress of aiding the terrorists.
Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today.
It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true.
•
Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.
Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress had nothing close to the president's access to intelligence. The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove dissent and make conjecture seem like fact.
It's hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working - a view we now know was accurate. France, Russia and Germany said war was not justified. Even Britain admitted later that there had been no new evidence about Iraq, just new politics.
The administration had little company in saying that Iraq was actively trying to build a nuclear weapon. The evidence for this claim was a dubious report about an attempt in 1999 to buy uranium from Niger, later shown to be false, and the infamous aluminum tubes story. That was dismissed at the time by analysts with real expertise.
The Bush administration was also alone in making the absurd claim that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and somehow connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was based on two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk. The other was that Iraq trained Qaeda members in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Before the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that this was a deliberate fabrication by an informer.
Mr. Bush has said in recent days that the first phase of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation on Iraq found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence. That is true only in the very narrow way the Republicans on the committee insisted on defining pressure: as direct pressure from senior officials to change intelligence. Instead, the Bush administration made what it wanted to hear crystal clear and kept sending reports back to be redone until it got those answers.
Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, said in 2003 that there was "significant pressure on the intelligence community to find evidence that supported a connection" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The C.I.A. ombudsman told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the administration's "hammering" on Iraq intelligence was harder than he had seen in his 32 years at the agency.
Mr. Bush and other administration officials say they faithfully reported what they had read. But Vice President Dick Cheney presented the Prague meeting as a fact when even the most supportive analysts considered it highly dubious. The administration has still not acknowledged that tales of Iraq coaching Al Qaeda on chemical warfare were considered false, even at the time they were circulated.
Mr. Cheney was not alone. Remember Condoleezza Rice's infamous "mushroom cloud" comment? And Secretary of State Colin Powell in January 2003, when the rich and powerful met in Davos, Switzerland, and he said, "Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment needed to transform it into material for nuclear weapons?" Mr. Powell ought to have known the report on "special equipment"' - the aluminum tubes - was false. And the uranium story was four years old.
•
The president and his top advisers may very well have sincerely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But they did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It's obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his terrorist connections. We need to know how that happened and why.
Mr. Bush said last Friday that he welcomed debate, even in a time of war, but that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." We agree, but it is Mr. Bush and his team who are rewriting history.
Orphans of the storm
Thousands of stranded and orphaned pets were rescued from disaster areas during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I was living in Houston during that hurricane season, and I volunteered hundreds of hours at one of the local shelters, and both saw and heard heart-breaking stories of people lost, and pets unaccounted for.
Several hundred of the cats and dogs were airlifted to the San Francisco Bay Area, where vets and volunteers have been caring for the animals. Local SPCAs and animal shelters are providing "foster-to-adopt" programs for the pets, with the thought that they might still be found and reclaimed by their human companions.
When I married Richard and moved to SF, the two wonderful dogs my roommate had (and I shared) went to live with her parents in Arkansas. We could only take one (Jake) and it seemed hurtful to split up the boys that had lived together for about 7 years.
Richard says we can adopt a dog from a local animal shelter, as long as he or she isn't larger than we are. No Marmadukes. Tomorrow, we're going hiking in Point Reyes, and on our way home we're going to stop at the Marin Humane Society and meet a couple of the dogs rescued from the Gulf Coast during the storms.
Here are two of the guys we've seen online, and hope to meet tomorrow.
11-11-11
Today is my grandfather's birthday. He was one of the kindest, most honorable persons I have ever known. He died a couple of summers ago, and yet he is still with me. I hear his voice sometimes as I'm speaking, see his gestures in my own reflected movements. Everyone else notices him in my driving :-)
I am sad that he missed our wedding, yet he was there among the roses and under the pine trees. He helped create me, shape me, inform my thinking. My grandfather's profound investment in my life was present in our wedding vows.
I first met Jesus in my grandparents' home. Granddaddy would come home from his job at the church, singing a hymn. He taught me the "creatures" song, which the unlearned call The Doxology. He would have enjoyed Richard, laughed with him, and welcomed him warmly.
Also, he was in our wedding because my grandmother was there. Isn't she beautiful? Lovely inside and out. She participated in all the wedding weekend events, and came to the microphone during the ceremony, pronounced a blessing upon our marriage, and prayed for us.
I will call her today, and reminisce a little with her. She misses the love of her life, with whom she lived so happily for more than 60 years, and never more so than on his birthday.
There are some things about Richard that remind me of my grandfather. The kindness with which he interacts with me, the strength in his hands, the boundless enthusiasm for life, the laughing enjoyment of a good story, the love of baseball.
I wish they had been friends. Maybe through me they are.
7-digit dialing
Perhaps I'm still in the honeymoon phase. Perhaps this is just deep, deep love. Each day dawns with delight and a kind of soul-filling happiness that the writer of Jude terms "joy inexpressible."
And then there are the small pleasures, such as 7-digit dialing. In San Francisco, if you're calling another SF # from a local land line or cell phone, you just dial the actual phone number, leaving off the area code.
The world used to be like this, only more so. I'm just old enough to remember - as a young child living in a small town - dialing just the last four digits. Forget area codes, think about phone numbers such as 867-5309. (Yes, pop culture sneaks into the blog as insidiously as MSG sneaks into our food.) Your "exchange" was the first three numbers, in this case 867, and it definied a geographic area as a subset of the larger area code which might encompass the entire state.
So, if you were dialing not just within your state or town, but within your own exchange, you merely picked up the phone and dialed (not pushed nor punched but dialed, tick tick tick tick tick) 5309 and said, Jenny, don't lose that number! Or honey, bring home some milk. Or Mildred, did you see what Jenny was wearing? I declare to my time...
But styrophoam and msg took over dining, ranting and raving took over thoughtful dialog, ten-digit dialing took over phone calls even in your own neighborhood, and America's going to hell in a handbasket.
Except for San Francisco. Where the little people still vote and decide elections, where fresh fruit can be purchased and eaten the same day, where a Chinese woman you've never met asks for your opinion about the pillows she's buying for her bed, where the Muslim man with the long beard puts his own quarter in your parking meter because you didn't have enough change, and where 7 numbers is still enough to call your husband at work.
Ah vanity, all of life is vanity
And gray slacks, apparently.
Richard walked with me on the beach this morning.
No nudists, for those of you following that story line.
We headed southwest along the curving enclave, looking up at the mansions built shoulder-to-shoulder along the crumbling cliffs.
He's been in a sort of shock therapy this week, having to purge his wardrobe to fit within the restrictions of our new closet space. I feel his pain. This happened to me the days immediately before our wedding, when he and Julie oversaw the dismantling of my cold-war-era stockpiles of clothing and mail. This begs another blog, wherein the pain and healing can be fully revealed. Suffice it to say, they watched me (and helped me) give away more than 3/4 of everything I owned.
So the man comes in with his bags and boxes of clothing.
Gray slacks.
Khakis.
Blue blazers with gold buttons.
Baseball caps.
More gray slacks.
Khakis.
Blue blazers with gold buttons.
Baseball caps.
How much space does this blog server hold?
And have I mentioned the gray slacks?
When I was a child, I was given a small black-and-white television set from Sears and Roebuck. The screen was 7 inches diagonally, I think, and there was a handle on top. When it started, a fascinating monochrome "color bar" spanned the screen, showing every gradation of gray imaginable.
Hello, Richard's slacks.
I know its hard, baby. Look at me and my closet full of black pants.
But I see you sneaking that 14th pair of gray slacks back into the "keep" pile.
A rose by any other name
...might not be wearing any thorns.
Several yellow roses were on the beach, at the edge of the surf.
I sat on my heels and pondered them.
Richard said later, over dinner, "The sea carries many things in her waves, babe."
But yellow roses, in such good condition?
"There are often memorial services just up the beach, around at Fort Point," he said. "Maybe in scattering ashes, roses were given as well."
He paused a moment, "That's where we scattered my dad's ashes, and that's where you will cast mine."
The thought of Richard gone from this earth is shockingly discordant with the bright sun, the life-giving pulse of the sea, the invigorating wind.
Now I'm walking alone toward the bridge, and I can't bear to imagine his absence. Mercifully, a nude man approaches, disrupting the funeral. My eye contact is rigorous, willing all peripheral vision to take a nap, go to lunch, have a martini. Have three martinis.
"Would you like me to take your picture, with the Golden Gate behind you?" he asked.
"Thanks, but my husband has already done that."
"Beautiful day," he said.
"Beautiful!" I replied.
"If you change your mind, let me know," he said, and walked back to his perch among the rocks.
I ask Richard later what he knew about public nudity. After a few smart-ass remarks, he summed it up under categories:
- Religion
- Spirituality (not to be confused with religion)
- Perversion (see #1 above)
- Lifestyle
- Poverty
- Childhood
In San Francisco, he said, you're likely to encounter all of them.
I support private nudity, but I'm not sure what to do with public nudity. What's appropriate etiquette? Knee-jerk courtesy would seem to dictate looking away or not coming too close, but my definition of courtesy also involves "wearing clothes in public places."
I get the sense the nudists on my beach fall under categories 2 and 4. One skinny white guy is always folded in the lotus position among the dunes, naked as the day of his birth. The others just seem to be sun-bathing or lunching or relaxing naked.
Perhaps I'll just ask. About the etiquette, that is, not poverty nor perversion.
What is a rose without her thorns?
A tree without his bark?
A man without his clothes?
Does a rose, by any other name, still wear her thorns?
Or is she then no longer a rose?
Nude bathers are on my beach
For those of you joining the story in progress, I'm a new bride who stepped down from the Texas church I helped pastor to marry a tall Italian and move with him to San Francisco.
Lots of transitions, lots of emotions, and a very happy new marriage. Who knew he had power tools and an entire case of drill bits? Had I known this, I would've married him sooner.
We live on the western-most coast of San Francisco, near the Golden Gate bridge, just above a beach in the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
I have taken ownership of this beach -- a sole proprietorship, not an S-Corp -- and although I rule the waves, it is a benign dictatorship and I am quite willing to share it with beachcombers, dogs and seals. Even the most accomodating monarch however (see Beatrix of the Netherlands) furrows a brow when the all-nude visigoths crash the party.
Saturday, my husband (Sir Ricky of Black & Decker) and I went for a hike up and down the hills and along the shore. When what to our wondering eyes should appear but a miniature sleigh, and 8 tiny nude deer?
As we drew closer, and Richard verified that they were in fact naked and not just wearing pink wet suits (Anglo bathers), he pulled me away from them with a sudden decorous expression on his face. "They want their privacy," he murmurred.
Then why are they on my beach, one wonders?
Pre-marriage, I no doubt would have authored Richard's response, turning shyly away while saying things like, "Unmarried pastor, mustn't present the appearance of impropriety," etc.
Post-marriage to El Guapo, I'm taking a page from David Niven's amused query, "Why do some people insist on displaying their short-comings?"
Truth in advertising
Sometimes the Weather (capital Wuh) covers the City like the cold wet robes of a Sea-ruling Sultan.
This weekend, we couldn't see the bridge for the fog. We groped our way over to Sausolito and found a warm grotto of Indian food perched on pilings along the Bay.
These kayakers paddled in and out of sight, less than a hundred yards away, accompanied by a sailing ship creaking against a lone anchor. Behind them are the mountains of Marin, Alcatraz Island, and the 7 hills of the City, waiting to be discovered in the fog.
Date night
I had a date with my husband last night. We've been married 13 days. Sometimes it feels like a glorious lifetime, sometimes a shocking yet beautiful surprise. Who's this man in my bed? Where's Jake the Dog? What a happy morning.
I rushed into the restaurant to meet him, full of my discoveries from the day. I'm working from home for a company based in Houston, and we're close enough to the ocean that I can spend my lunch hour walking on the beach -- and keep it to under an hour.
When I jogged down for my walk yesterday, a teacher from Sacred Heart was overseeing a group of middle school students as they excavated civilizations from the edge of the dunes. What a marvelous curriculum they have here! Fifth and sixth graders are grouped into small teams, create both a fictional civilization and accompanying artifacts, bury them in the sand, and then dig up - layer after layer - each other's mysterious pasts. It's an all-day jamboree in the surf. Next day, the teams describe what they've found, try to piece together an understanding of the found objects, and then debrief with the group that actually created the culture.
What a terrific team learning exercise, and what an absolutely splendid metaphor for adult relationships.
Each day we excavate a little of what the other person has placed beneath the dunes. Layer by layer, like a particularly piquant lasagne, we uncover the delicacy created for us. Pardon my mixed metaphors - I'm very hungry and the Italian is downstairs in his old chinos, cooking my dinner.
Each day, another found object illuminates or obscures the man I married.
Magare, caro signore, amo questo uomo.
Come to the table
Breakfast together in the mornings, dinner together at night.
Laughter, work and play in the midst.
Our friend Karen made the pitcher and bowl in her studio; she and Steve gave them to us as wedding gifts.
Thank you God, for blessing our marriage.
He is a joy.
