Bird song and foghorns

I made more returns to the west side of San Francisco recently, and they came with that feeling of San Francisco being my natural habitat, even though I retreat to the sunnier and warmer East Bay when it’s time to go home.

The first was unplanned: I had a crown come loose while I was eating an early supper before the Oakland Ballers’ Opening Day game. My dentist’s schedule was wide open the day after the next day, but I had plans for an all-day outing that day with the old friend still grieving the loss of her husband. I asked for a late afternoon appointment, so I could make one trip into the City and go directly to the Saint Andrew’s Society Firehouse clubhouse on Telegraph Hill for an early evening special event. That was a presentation by metal sculptor Andy Scott, famous for his immense horse sculptures like the famous Kelpies in Scotland. The best she could do for me was 1:40, though, so I planned to make a day of it.

I put the book I’m currently reading, Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally’s The Last Great Dream (of which I’ve written) into the pink canvas tote bag my DAR Chapter’s Regent had gifted me and my sister Board members, set on spending the afternoon sitting and reading in Alta Plaza Park. My dentist’s office is a ways out on Geary Boulevard, past the Russian Orthodox Cathedral with its onion domes and Trad’r Sam’s, an old school tiki bar with tropical drinks at reasonable prices. In the Outer Richmond, California Street ends up two blocks north of Geary after bending off the downtown grid to take a level east-west course. That meant I could easily take the 1 California bus on my way to both later destinations.

I’m doing well at making my way back into the land of the living through grieving my bestie, but today puzzled me. It was a lovely day in a locale I enjoy being in, yet I was feeling dissatisfied, a continuance of random emotions surprising me, which happens while grieving. Fortunately, that passed. It was clear and decently warm on the southern hillside of Alta Plaza, with the familiar (and beloved) view of Sutro Heights and its forest, and the transmitter hill just north of Twin Peaks. A small set of the parrots who make their home on Telegraph Hill were flying back and forth, their squawking echoing off the brick-faced apartment blocks on Sacramento Street like aleatory music in stereo. There was good dog-walking people-watching. When the parrots decided to fly off, there was other bird song and the sounds of the children in the playground off a ways. Around four o’clock, though it was comfy and clear where I was, I began to hear the sound of foghorns in the distance. I’d say it was a perfect moment.

It was a perfect moment emotionally as well. When I was a younger adult, I wondered whether I’d ever be a part of the City I loved and in which I lived. There was a time when my little lesbian community had been hit hard by radicals and scattered to the wind, but the easy acceptance of lesbians in the mainstream was still in a nascent state. My dream of my own cute little Victorian in Noe Valley kept receding as, even then, real estate prices kept escalating. I’d found a new bohemian scene, but realized I needed to be able to navigate that mainstream. Catching the wave of the new technology of word processing and becoming one of the City’s top temps was a start. But would I ever feel grounded as part of the passing scene?

Well, dear reader (if I may go all Brontë sisters for a moment), it turns out that, yes, I am part of this home, and not just some random eccentric bohemian gal set down in it. I was feeling it while sitting in Alta Plaza, and it comforted me. And then I proceeded to show my integration by knowing my way via four buses (thanks to a short detour to pick up a bottle of single malt scotch for the event per a request in a text) to the Firehouse.

I believe this progress toward personal comfort and self-assurance is the result of a few different factors. One, of course, is having lost the compulsion to make an identity out of the various counterculture components of my life. That comes in part from there being, in these alphabet soup days, no lesbian or other gay community with which I care to identify. Moreover, blending in in diaspora seems to suit me, as I have caring and supportive friends and associates out here.

There’s also the knowledge that I’ve ended up doing a pretty darned good job of adulting, and have the comfort and security enabling I can live my bohemian life without having to make a big deal about it for ego reinforcement purposes. It was easier when my bestie was still alive to have a positive sense of being quirky because we reinforced each other with our banter and our adventures. I’ve realized a part of my response to no longer having her around is to be stronger, which is quite an advantage during these uncertain times. I’ve upped my game, and realized I do have capabilities on my own, as happened after my mother passed: I could no longer pretend I was flying beneath her wings instead of just doing all the things I’m capable of doing on my own.

Going out and adulting when I’ve had to seems to be a theme. I recently heard the oldie “Summertime, Summertime” by The Jamies on the radio, a song about nothing to do but have fun without responsibilities during the summer, and had a flashback to my having been all at sea regarding summer jobs at that age. I was tempted to have a feeling of inadequacy, when I remembered that, as a grown-up, I worked hard when I had to, resulting in my owning a home of my own.

In that pink canvas tote bag had been a card, with a note from my Regent thanking me for having done a great job as Parliamentarian during a year in which tricky stuff had come up. She said she appreciated my having handled it competently and professionally under stress. Were my mother still on the planet, it would be something that would have made her proud. Instead, I simply had to take it as validation that I’m not some oddball managing to fake it when I have to, but a competent adult people are happy to have in their circles.

Well, maybe competent adulthood being a second nature is more like it; I still feel like a kid so much of the time despite all my grown-up chops. It’s comforting to know, however, that I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me!