Busy, Not Busy; Not Alone, Alone

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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Happy Endings

Driving up to Sacramento on Thanksgiving, we could see the snow-capped Sierra far to the east. The air was that clear and crisp our whole visit.

I've grown to love the neighborhood where my daughter and her family live. There are so many trees that remind me of my youth in Michigan.

A place with actual seasons.

The trees in the park near her house are gorgeous this time of year -- leaves red, yellow, orange and green.

My youngest and I made five pies -- two pecan, two pumpkin and one apple. Others in the family made the turkey, dressing, gravy, three green salads, sauteed brussel sprouts, Waldorf Salad, broccoli, other veggies, other side dishes and other desserts.

It was a magnificent feast -- as it is for many people, Thanksgiving is my favorite meal of the year. As a boy, I loved dark meat; later on I grew to like white meat; as I've grown older, I now once again strongly prefer dark meat.

The kids baked this turkey to perfection, as far as the dark meat was concerned. So juicy, perfect.

The rest of the five day weekend involved a lot of driving, homework, more college application stuff, football games on TV, and writing.

It's impossible at my age to not turn to memories during the holiday periods. I can easily summon the moment as a young child, with my nose pressed to the window of our house in Royal Oak, that I first grasped the enormity of the fact that every snowflake hitting the outside of that same window had a unique shape.

This was math at its best -- capturing the concept of infinity.

An infinite number of anything implies unrestrained uniqueness. The concept of unique appeals to the inner mathematical core of a writer.

Writers fancy ourselves as unique voices. We are arrogant in this way -- that we believe our ability to string together words in a visual narrative is as distinct as our fingerprint.

It's our verbal fingerprint.

Storytellers need to believe that stories matter and that the way we choose to tell ours matters as a result.

We may not ever discover why we write; or whether it is a gift, a psychological disorder, an urge to connect, a desire to be heard, or a malady not yet diagnosed by medicine.

But we write. We write and write. I've written millions of words. They've been read by hundreds of thousands of people.

The other day, in the park, shooting the photo at the top of this post, I felt I could look through those beautiful orange leaves to heaven.

I don't know what I mean by heaven.

My 18-year-old son was here the other day when some Christians showed up at the front door wanting to talk to us about Christ. He politely explained to them that he is an atheist and they politely moved on to ring the next doorbell in their missionary outreach.

Maybe by heaven I mean what I felt I was glimpsing was the end of my own particular story. If so, it was a lovely shade of orange, like sundown in the tropics.

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Thanksgiving Photo Journal

Sound of a Train Whistle

Late at night, in Sacramento, after a lovely Thanksgiving with all six kids and all five grandchildren, now everyone's asleep but me.

I never seem to be able to sleep easily any more when I'm not at home. :(

As the teens were settling down, an Amtrak train was making its way eastward when it passed through this capital city, rumbling down the tracks toward the Sierra and up to the Donner Pass, before winding its way back down to Reno and on across Nevada.

To me, there's nothing quite like the sound of a train to ignite my imagination or fire my memory.

One of the kids mumbled, "What is that?" They never hear real trains in San Francisco, as all we have there are commuter lines. Those whistles are different, much more like car horns.

Johnny Cash understood train sounds, as does Willie Nelson.

I used to have this fantasy. In it, I would take off from San Francisco by train and travel the country, writing my way across the land.

In that fantasy, I would step off into little towns, spend some time there, get to know the locals, before moving on.

I'm sure this is a common fantasy, especially among writers, who fancy our ability to capture the pulse of the land, and yearn to do so.

But maybe the pulse of America no longer resides in the small towns or farms. Maybe, in fact, America has lost its own pulse and no longer knows how to locate its heart.

I think these seditious thoughts, from time to time, especially when I hear a train whistling by, Who even rides those trains any longer?

I've actually been on the trains all over this country, east, west, north, south. In the end I discovered no great wisdom there, just the sound of the tracks and the view out the window of the land, vast and mostly unsettled, passing by, as I sat trapped in a metal box.

I don't recall ever writing anything great on a train, either.

Maybe romantic fantasies are just that -- fantastic exaggerations built on the fragile shoulders of emotional moments?

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CONGRATULATIONS AIDAN WEIR!

There's my 18-year-old son with his favorite coach.

Tonight, we learned that he has been named as one of the top 11 soccer players in the in the city of San Francisco. This is an incredible honor, though one he dismisses with his typical combination of modesty and naivete ("I figured I would win it, Dad. Can we not brag about it?")

My next task is to figure out whether and how to use this news to help him get into college. Unfortunately, we had just sent off his applications to all the California schools a few hours before this news came in.

He also got his first acceptance -- from the University of Montana. It's an exciting time for this high school senior.

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Laughter

This is a topic I don't often write about, but what I love about getting my kids and grandkids together is how much laughter fills my house. Most of the time it's a quiet place, just me and the cat, who never smiles, let alone laughs.

Today's menu of castle-building, snacking, joking and jumping let to lots of laughs. It was great.

Tonight, a rainy night, it's good to be home.

I've often noted how easily and frequently young people smile and laugh. Old people, by contrast, often scowl or look worried. Our bodies hurt -- that's part of the problem. When I watch young people I don't know, I envy their apparent light-heartedness.

When I'm with the ones I know, I am much more likely to smile and laugh than when alone or with other elders.

I think I have a good sense of humor; when with others, I like to joke. But I'm rarely amused when alone. Then, it seems, only worries come to visit.

Tonight I am not alone. And I am smiling.

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Sore Loser

Mitt Romney is in the news tonight blaming his loss to Obama on "gifts" Obama gave minorities. What a sad end to what seemed otherwise to be a fairly honorable campaign. I've often posted, in the context of sports, how kids learn how to lose gracefully and to win gracefully. Kids never get a microphone to complain about their losses.

But billionaires do.

America is lucky to have avoided a victory by this sore loser.

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