As my vegetarian, 14-year-old artist finalizes her portfolio in preparation for applying to the School of the Arts, up on Twin Peaks, all I can say is thank god for hummus and edemame.
These are among the constants in my refrigerator, especially at a time she is growing so fast that everyone who sees her after a week or two gap, repeats the same mantra: "Julia, have you grown taller again?"
Today, in the driving rain, I started off driving her 16-year-old brother's carpool to Lowell HS out near the Ocean. He loves the rain and the fog, so he is always happy when we have this type of weather.
Soon after, it was back out into the rain to pick Julia up from shadowing at Mission HS across the street from Dolores Park. The day is close when she has to choose among the six schools on her list and to rank them.
The city's lottery demands that approach.
As I settled in to try and work, a new call came -- my 18-year-old had a dental emergency, so soon it was out in the (now) mist once again, to rush him to the dentist, all the way over near North Beach in the far end of Polk Gulch, at the western edge of Russian Hill.
After that it was back and forth from here to the gym and to Bernal as night time settled over the City by the Bay. All told, I'd driven nearly 49 miles, an appropriate number for this City that measures 7 miles by 7.
***
I have not been blogging here much lately, and for that I apologize to the handful of loyal readers who keep an eye on this space. I'm going to try and amend for that. Plus, there are reasons good and bad for my silence.
The good is that I have been busy with work projects that are helping me limp to the finish line of the worst financial year, for me, of the past quarter century. I may be limping but at least I am still standing.
The bad is I have felt ill from some time now, both physically and mentally. I don't usually write about depression, but it is no secret that among writers this is a common problem.
I'm fine with it, normally. Like other emotional states it can be episodic. It's only when it settles in like an unwanted house guest that I become concerned.
I have worked hard enough on depression to know the proper therapy, which is to connect with others. Luckily, it is not a challenge to find people I know and also to meet new people.
I meet new people every week, literally. Most of them are young, smart, pleasant, interesting. We have wonderful conversations. A substantial number of them are also lovely young women -- an added bonus for a man who has always loved women.
But these relationships, for the most part, are fleeting -- bits of conversations traded as if on the wind, a fragment may blow first this way and then that. I am reminded at those times of cherry blossom leaves in Japan as the trees disengage themselves from their fragments of beauty, exchanging them for greenery and the richness of fruit, only later still to soon stand empty and bare as the winter arrives.
It is winter, in the city and in my life.
As a Michigan boy, I wish it would start snowing outside, sort of. But if it did, and I had no one to share it with, I probably would be more drawn to Robert Frost's "Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening."
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