Many happy returns

Once upon a time, an intern came all the way from England to work at the tiny theatre company where I was quasi-gainfully employed. She slept on our sofa for a month and stayed my friend forever. Well, twenty years, so far, but that seems like a good start.  I'm not saying that installing an imported intern in your living room is a surefire way to make an excellent friend. After all, I only tried it once. Your results may vary. I can only say that, in my case, it was a fantastically good idea.

Since then, Talya has far outpaced me as a proper grown-up person. She is a theatre professor with a husband and two children and a house that is located, extremely inconveniently, in Massachusetts. All that distance has mattered very little though because our friendship is built on the unshakable bedrock of bookstores, theatre, fancy cocktails, and chocolate. Oh. And birthdays. Talya and I believe in birthdays.

I have never understood those people who refuse to actively participate in a day when people you love are so delighted that you were born that they give you cake.  That seems like a day worth announcing as broadly as possible. Not everyone understands this, however. Therefore, if you are a birthday enthusiast, it is important to make sure that when your personal anniversary rolls around, you are in the company of another birthday enthusiast. This is why, despite living thousands of miles away from her,  I have managed to spend three out of the last six birthdays with Talya and, often, her whole family, who actively wonder if I have a home of my own and/or any other friends at all. In recent years, I have driven to her house from Vermont; she has traken the train to New York to have lunch with me; and once, perhaps most spectacularly,  I abandoned a friend in Switzerland and flew to London to crash her family vacation and be taken to a charming restaurant in Primrose Hill. She has never found this the least bit questionable.

Today, as it happens, is Talya's birthday, or, as we feel it should more fittingly be called, la Fête de Talya.  She seems to have arranged her life in such a way that she can manage to celebrate it without flying across the country to my house. Indeed, she tells me that there was even a parade in Amherst this afternoon, which we assume was in her honor.  I applaud her independence, of course, while at the same time feeling a little embarrassed about the one-sidedness of the arrangement.

I thought perhaps a virtual outing was called for.

Had she been here, I would have taken her to the 20th Century Café, where everything is beautiful and the hot chocolate is perfect (a rare, rare thing for hot chocolate to be in a coffee-obsessed town).  She could have had whatever she wanted, of course. In addition to excellent beverages, this charming lady also makes delicious lunches and very fancy cakes. (Click through to see more).

And then, because there is no one in the entire world who loves the Von Trapp Family Singers more than Tal (really, I cannot overstate her enthusiasm), we would, naturally, have gone to the Sing-Along Sound of Music at the Castro, where no matter what birthday it is, everyone gets to be 16 going on 17.

Bonne fête de Talya à tous. And may you all be so lucky as to have such a thoughtful, funny, caring friend.

Happy birthday, Tal, with love from San Francisco.

Rain, rain

Earlier this week it rained.

In California, we have nearly forgotten what rain is like--its stealthy seeping, or its splashy suddenness. We, by which I mean everyone but me, are an outdoor people, a tribe of hiking, camping cyclists, so we don't mind so much when it's sunny for months and months. Well, except for the overpowering odor of urban urine.  And the fact that everything's dying.  That part isn't so great. Maybe we should take some beer to the park and talk about it.  Bring the volleyball.

Typically when it rains, students react with dismay. Dismay with some considerable volume, which is how I know. In fairness, California teenagers are not, shall we say, overburdened with outerwear. If you have nothing more than a sweatshirt, an off campus lunch destination, and soccer practice, you are going to get wet. Imminent dampness is not terrifically appealing. I get it. Personally, I would like to experience all rain from the vantage point of a large armchair next to a large window. The dry side of that large window, please.

This week, though, the reaction from the students in the hall was not the usual collective groan, so much as a collective gasp of astonishment that unexpectedly bloomed into joy. I stepped into the hall (I have no window in my office. Ditto, armchair.) and found students clustered around the glass doors, staring astonished at water clattering to the street in sheets. I joined them, beaming, as a few kids burst their way past us to stand, arms wide, smiling faces upturned, in the full tumult of the downpour.

By the time work was over, the rain had stopped, but the whole neighborhood smelled of clean cement and trees. New and green.

Old Timers

Yesterday, I got a message from my Uncle Jack. As this may be unprecedented, it was a pretty major event.  Uncle Jack lives waaaaaayy out in the Avenues and has lived in San Francisco all his life. He is my father's older brother and, as such, he is no spring chicken. In fact, at this point, he may actually qualify as a winter chicken. Additionally, his health is not, as he and/or my father might say, "up to snuff."  At least, that is an expression they both have been known to employ, though neither would be likely to use it about their health, unless perhaps to describe their imminent return to the level of snuff. When calling to inquire after a friend or relation they both famously open with, "How are you doing?  Great?" 

They are the uncomplaining side of the family. Not stoic, mind you, just sort of cheerfully uncomplaining. In fact, I believe that my father might deny ever having had a cold. [Note: he has had many colds.] Surely, it is statistically impossible that I inherited zero of this bight-sidedness since there seems to be so much to go around, and yet I go crying and grousing and swearing through life, rolling my eyes as though it counted as aerobic exercise.  I will say it now: I am not proud of myself.

Uncle Jack's message was straight out of an "old people" joke from the very advent of answering machines.  It began loudly with, "Kari?  Kari?  Kari?" though my outgoing message is pretty explicit about my absence. I'm also confident that this is not the first answering machine Uncle Jack has encountered in the last 30 years, but it would be hard to tell just by listening. Once he got past the tricky start, he left the salient information about a family dinner and asked that I call him back.  He did not, however, leave a phone number.

This afternoon I called information and I got to participate in another hackneyed joke with the assistance of a Comcast robot that was willing to hear "John" or "Kiernan" but not both at the same time. It finally gave up on me and transferred me to a human, which was exciting for me since I didn't know there was a human option available. Though my conversation with the human, I was very astonished to discover that Uncle Jack is unlisted. (I mean, if one's elderly relatives are not available through directory assistance, who is?) [Note: I am.]

I gave up on all this independent problem solving and called my father. Unlike me, my father calls Uncle Jack with some frequency. I have been in the room when it's happened, in fact, so I know it's true. Yet, he was a bit stymied by the phone number request. It transpires that he has Uncle Jack on speed dial, but seeing as how he was already on the phone, was not sure that he could look up the number.  Fair enough.  "But don't you have it in the rolodex?" I asked.  (There is a rolodex.)  He thought he did, so he went to the other room to check.  "Yes. It's here. It's EL OH 6..."  "What?"  "El Oh Six..."  "Daddy, are you giving me the letter exchange right now?  Is that still a thing?  In 2015?"   We weren't too sure, so we agreed he'd check the speed dial and call me back. That took about ten minutes for reasons I can't imagine and about which I chose not to inquire. The upshot is that yes. Uncle Jack is still reachable on the LO exchange.

Something about this, my uncle bellowing at my voicemail from his house in the Sunset where he's lived for more than 50 years; my father on the other side of the bridge basically saying "Operator? Get me Plaza 209." is deeply moving to me. Meanwhile the Google bus rumbles by my house, followed by three Ubers and a Lyft, and I moan about how San Francisco has changed.

And it has. No doubt.

But it sure as hell hasn't changed as much since 1995 as it has since 1935.
And guess who never complains about it?  Not ever.

God bless the Kiernan brothers and this little city where their mother was born.
 

Guidance

On my way home, a cement truck on 18th Street was blocking an entire lane. There was a workman in the clear lane directing traffic. This was, theoretically, a good idea. However, it was so dark out that all I could see of him was his reflective vest. His hands, which I saw only as I passed directly in front of him, were in feverish motion, alternating between "stop" and "come on, come on, come on."

Invisibly.

It felt like a metaphor.

Thankful

On Wednesday before thanksgiving, my friend Christoph came over for dinner, but, obviously. we did some copyediting first because we know how to party. During his whole visit, my apartment was A) warm [thank you heater-fixing man] and B) quiet, which are my two favorite ways for my apartment to be. Wither the upstairs crashing and bellowing and stereo singalongs?  How can one solicit sympathy from one's friends if the thing that is ruining your life refuses to display itself in company?  Hrumph. Christoph informs me--very satisfyingly, I might add--that there is (really) a German word for that. A word that describes this phenomenon of something not happening when you are trying to demonstrate it to others, despite it having happened any number of times before. I do not remember what this word is, alas, but I would imagine it is equally applicable when you try to print for an hour, finally give up and call the technology expert, only to have the printer leap to life the moment he enters the room.

I wasn't sure whether this was a one-time just-to-screw-with-you instance of the German word or something more enduring. Dare I ever hope?  But morning came and still: nothing. Ultimately, the neighbors were gone for four whole days during which I did things like read an entire book, sleep til 11AM, and weep tears of joy. Thanksgiving was our one-year anniversary of bitter co-habitation and, to mark the occasion, I would like to thank the boys upstairs for giving me the incredibly thoughtful gift of their absence.

This morning I had a dream that my cousin called to tell me that some friends of hers were moving out of their apartment in the West Village and that, on my behalf, she had convinced them to let me have it for $2500 a month, but I needed to decide immediately. I said yes.

When I woke up and groped my way back to reality, I puzzled over this dream. I seldom think about this particular cousin, so where did she spring from?  My hardworking subconscious must have considered all my many cousins and produced her as the most connected among them. The one who would perhaps be able to call in a favor for me. Mind you, I cannot possibly afford to pay $2500 in rent, but I did so appreciate her efforts, particularly as we haven't spoken for years.

I lay there listening to the boys breakfasting in the manner of young oxen five feet over my bed and realized they were what had woken me. They are the last thing I hear at night and the first thing I hear in the morning--a statement that might be quite tender were I describing a lilting melody or the sonorous murmuring of my true love. Alas. Meanwhile, there I was sleeping, while my poor subconscious, jostled from its pleasant REM, was trying to develop an emergency exit strategy. I felt quite sorry for it. My subconscious, in short, would like me to get the hell out of here, crippling debt be damned.

It's worth noting that the impressively connected cousin lives in Texas, where one assumes she would have a lot more real estate leads than in Manhattan, but my subconscious, desperate or not, is apparently having none of that.

For some reason a Google image search for "quiet" results in a LOT of pictures of nearly naked, buxom women holding massive automatic weapons. I have no idea why.