San Francisco

San Francisco, Aug. 17

I’ve been stewing this past week about something a friend, a long-time friend, said to me. The stewing has me feeling unjust, unreasonable, uncharitable even.

“He’s not my enemy,” she offered simply as we descended the staircase.

“Oh,” I muttered, quickly glancing down to avoid stumbling on the next step, “No, I….I…only meant. Well…okay, sure.”

We’d been standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows, gazing out at one of the newer garishly appointed high-rises in Civic Center, when I mentioned what popped into memory then, almost in passing.

“I think he moved into that building. After,” I gestured toward the window. “But, I wouldn’t really know actually.”

As I turned away and we moved toward the first flight of stairs downward, she offered that she’d recently seen my ex over coffee with a friend of hers. They’re together now, you see. My ex and this friend of hers, as such things tend to go. The world…so small, after all.

“He’s not my enemy.” Her words echoing in my mind.

Was this feeling of unease from her having coffee with him at all, or the implication that I never would again? Had she crossed some undefined battle line? Had I drawn one?

Echo…echo…echo…

I wish I could have said, “Nor is he mine,” but that realization was still days away as these things tend to go.

What was has been, and there is no more. What else is there to say? The pangs of mutual friendship it turns out.

My school-aged claim upon my friend, whom I’ve known for years before ever meeting him, has me turning territorial in some very unflattering ways. Suddenly, I’m asking myself why she has a continued interest in someone I no longer know when the answer has nothing to do with me.

My ex’s new partner, as it is, has been a friend of hers for some time, perhaps longer than she’s known me; while my pettiness and immature assumptions are, unfortunately, something of a more recent nature.

San Francisco, Aug. 2

The Richmond train driver is usually a jovial sort, often announcing the destination as “R-R-R-RRRRRRRICHMOND! RICHMOND TRAIN! RRRRICHMOND!”

But not tonight. Tonight he simply called out the endpoint flatly, almost morosely.

I knew it was him from his distinctive voice even though I’ve never met or seen him.

It made me pause in my reading and look up and around the train car to see if anyone else had noticed.  A sea of faces absorbed by screens.

I went back to my book and reread the same paragraph three times as I wondered where his joy went. I wished I could ask him what was the matter. I wished I could tell him that I noticed. That someone was paying attention.

San Francisco, July 26

I gathered the will to go into the city today. My rescheduled doctor’s appointment to check on my uterine fibroids the occasion. I am still growing another fibroid baby even after the myomectomy nearly three years ago. I’m still relatively young, and don’t want to undergo another surgery in hopes of one day having a healthy full-term pregnancy, so we watch and we wait. My current recurrent fibroid that they can see is a mere 3 cm and has only grown 1 cm in the past year.

In the Lyft on my way to the doctor I passed through my former neighborhood and remembered how my life used to be. How can one not in such a scenario? It was where I first moved to San Francisco from Chicago; the earliest of days. The corner grocery where they’d special order me sugary cereal when my ex was out of town. The coffee shop in which I’d write over a Ceasar salad. The ample hills I’d traverse in search of something…anything else.

Passing through there now, it felt eerie and a lifetime ago. So very much has changed.

Even if only just 1 cm.

Berkeley, July 19

I mailed my letter to David Sedaris today. Actually, it’s still sitting in the mailbox and I second-guessed myself and about went and stole it back out. It would really be something if he wrote back!

Just before sealing the envelope, I enclosed a feather from one of the parrots, adding a postscript, “Juliette made you a pen.” He likes quirky. Will he take it that way? Enough to reply?

On the way home on BART later this evening there was a black gentleman on his phone bitching about his sister-in-law. He said he wished he could simply say to her, “Love yourself. Love your chocolate self.”

How delicious a sentiment.