It’s good to get out, and San Francisco is a fairly magical place to get out to. It’s especially nice for me to be outside in the fresh air instead of squirreled away in the outside room at Mom’s and Doug’s house, where I had hidden away for the last two days and nights. I had rapid tested positive for Covid, but this morning PCR tested negative. It was positively a relief to be negative.
Hugh took us into the city this afternoon to see a drive-in movie, and we watched Madeline in Paris with the San Francisco Bay glittering to the sides and seagulls swooping in front of the screen. Afterwards, we sat at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge at golden hour.
We then drove down Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the world. Finn and I raced along the side of the Ferry Building in the magical dusk while Clara watched skaters in the park and etched the Marina into her forever mind. I snapped photos of Fisherman’s Wharf and Hugh entertained us with stories.
As we drove past Ristorante Firenze into Chinatown, we felt chastened and reflective about the unconscionable violence towards Asians this week and forever. Especially in the Pacific-facing city, where ghosts of miners and gold panners live and where footprints of Japanese internment camps lay nearby, it’s impossible not to think with sadness of our tragedies.
Luckily as we told family stories of San Francisco, our thoughts lit up like the lights on the Bay Bridge. We laughed remembering how Kevin “dropped” his wedding ring into the Bay to prank Poppop and Brooks right before our wedding. Walking up the gangplank to take a champagne brunch cruise for Robin’s 50th was a bubbly memory, a whale of a good time that has forever warped my kids’ understanding of “brunch.” Getting creeped out at Alcatraz with the Hohenstreiters was a favorite for Finn.
And I had a fleeting memory of dinner at a Chinese restaurant with my grandparents as a child, pondering the jade lions guarding the door and my fortune. I love that my staid, conservative grandfather was progressive enough to work for Chinese colleagues in the 60s.
Clara may not get on the plane back to DC with us in a few weeks, as enchanted as she is by this cool gray city of love, in the words of Gary Kimura. That’s the great thing about travel, it pulls threads of the past into the future all while you’re just trying to enjoy the moment for a moment.
@theterrace 