The Loveable Suffering

27 July 09

More fog this morning, dripping out of the sky, slicking the balcony, washing out the cypress and roof-bunched ridge to west. Being near the ocean gives a sense of limitlessness or connection to other places and continents. But there's also the feeling of the land's end, the last of the West I love so much. San Francisco, bounded by ocean and bay like a three-sided island. There are no more mountains or river valleys or high deserts in which to roam beyond that fog-clenched ridge, only the vast moat of the sea. The warm flowery smells of land scoured away by the brackish grey of the sea's bouquet. Am I pining to move? Is Idaho calling me, or perhaps Italy or Australia, places with abundant countryside? Each summer spent in SF kills a little of the kid in you, the kid who even at age eighty will be yearning to get out and play on a dew-wet July morning.

_________

Bicycling home from the job I saw S. walking on 19th and pulled over to talk. He was carrying a porcelain cup of coffee, straight out of his studio around the corner. I asked him how the writing was going and he told me a book release party was being thrown at a nearby bar to celebrate his new work, a memoir. I liked his last book, but everything he writes has that overtly self-conscious quality of a transvestite strutting around soaking up the catcalls and taunts. (And I mean that as a compliment.) In the end, he's a good guy, a hard-working writer who's contributed a lot to the local literary and political scenes.

"How's the family," he asked.

"Good, good. Ada's cute and terrible as ever."

"Getting any sleep?"

"Sleep isn't so bad. But I'm lucky if I get a half hour in the morning to write."

"Nobody I know has anything good to say about having kids. Nobody. I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it."

"Maybe you should wonder about your friends."

"No, no," he said, half seriously, "I just don't think kid's are worth it."

"Oh, it's worth it. One or two anyway."

"Hmm," he hummed through pressed lips. "I don't know. Tell me how it's worth it. I need facts. Nobody can give me facts, and when they do the numbers don't add up to how ruining your life's worth having a kid."

"No," I agreed, "all the facts point against it. Kids are intangible things."

"Like love."

"Like love. On paper nobody should ever have any kids, I agree. But then the same goes for writing, doesn't it? What's it worth to you? What's your pay boil down to per hour, for all the hours you spend writing each day?"

"Yeah, it wouldn't be worth it," he shook his head. "I just don't know."

"Maybe nothing's worth it when you add up all the facts."

"Guess that's why us artists do so little with the rest of our lives, outside of art. We're cutting down our losses."

Cutting out more than that, I didn't say. The losses add up to gains if you live richly through the swings, I didn't say, and don't know myself if I believe it. The little wonder is a pain in the ass that hurts all the way sweetly to my heart, I didn't say, and do know as truly as I know anything. And what the hell, I could be strolling out of my cramped apartment toting a porcelain cup of coffee with nothing to do but drift around doubting anything's worth the trouble, nothing doing but a few books written about that same narcissistic wondering, with a few beery book release parties thrown in as facts proving their own self-worth. But I didn't say any of that. I could see S. was itching to get strolling. His coffee cup looked cold.

"Well, have a good one," I said.

"Say hello to the family."

"You bet."

And home I rode, into the loveable suffering.

Sonoma Sojourn

23-26 July 2009

“The petite bourgeoisie holy trinity: cooking, children, and spectator sports (which includes shopping).”

– Adam Gopnick, Paris to the Moon

And what about just plain old laying around?

Early Saturday morning, lazing in bed with the baby as Anna showers. The excitement of knowing that today we'll get out of town for a weekend up in Sonoma. Ada cooing and rocking about in her papoose, playing around with different expressions. First, her wise-acre smile out one corner of her mouth, then a full frown, the upside-down horse-shoe that old Italian men make when they wish to say boo, or 'I don't know, you got me,' or che te ne frega, meaning, what the hell? Boo, says little Ada, the corners of her mouth turned down and her eyes looking up, Boo, what the hell?

Here's what the heck, little one. We're getting out of town, heading up to stay with friends in Sonoma, and along the way watching for properties for sale up there, because we've got it in our heads now to try to buy something. Sonoma could be a good place to move. But all 200K will buy you there is a trailer home. Probably one with a heavy skunk residue in the air from the pot plants grown in the living room. But it's beautiful country up there, a mix of forested coast ranges and rolling hills of apple orchards and vineyards. Properties range from million dollar estates to junked ranch style compounds overgrown with eucalyptus and yes, pot plants.

What planted the home-buying seed is a little cottage for sale up in Boise that a buddy of mine told me about. It's on a third of an acre, in the North End neighborhood of big trees and yards and dirt alleyways nestled against the foothills of the Boise mountains. All for just 189 grand. By the internet photos the place looks charming, small and in need of some work and love, which is to say very attractive to us, with a good-sized yard that could take goats or chickens and be enough area for a big garden. Also an old garage/ca rage house could make a great studio for Anna. And we could roll an Air Stream into the yard, or build a writing shack for me. And the place is surrounded by big trees. Trees changing moods with the seasons: their bare limbs against a night sky of falling snow; red house finches daubing the trees in spring; the luxurious shade of hot summer afternoons.

Here's also the heck, young Ada: I want you to know seasons, and not only the interminable spring of San Francisco. There's nothing lovely about weather that's always lovely. Paradise comes to bore us, doesn't it? (Is there a good quote from Milton about that?) Something oppressive about the constant breezy blue skies, dreamy as they are, especially when the only variation is two months of entrenched fog. (JW, hunkered in the avenues, the front lines of the summer fog assault, told me the peas in his garden are growing mold, there's so little sun!) Yet, just ten miles away to the north, over the Golden Gate Bridge, it'll be 80 degrees and lovely.

___________

A warm and nearly very relaxing weekend in Sonoma. Stayed with Anna's good friend R at the country house she's renting for the summer in order to work on her novel. We left for only two days, but by the load in the car we might have been the Joads heading out west, a mattress strapped to the roof of our Model T. The mattress being baby contraptions and diaper bags and the big bouncy ball which has become indispensable when Ada won't calm her crying. And the funny thing is how little Anna and I want this stuff (does anybody?), yet there's no getting around some of it. Going light is a value in travel and in life as well. But going light means knowing what you'll need and what is superfluous, and since you can't know that exactly there's a degree of risk involved. I balked at that goddamn bouncy ball, lurid green and bulbous in the rear view mirror, revolting to every atom of traveler in me. But I must say Anna was right. For there I was, Sunday afternoon on the patio, stirred from my book and lemonade, bouncing fussy Ada on the ball after nothing else would soothe her, and finding a little peace myself as I watched out at the drifty poplar trees above the swell of grapevines, the valley oaks with a tinge of red in their leaves already, brought on by the drought.

We made a great fuss to get to the Russian River on Saturday. I wanted to be on the river terribly, and once R's boyfriend J and I were adrift on our tubes and in long talk, the women sitting on the shady banks, the venture became worth its hassle. Funny how as a parent you crave relaxation over everything else. All I wanted for the weekend was to sit reading on the deck and go for walks, and it was no small pain to have to help with dinner and dishes and the pile of logistics required to get the gang to the river. I was cursing to myself on the drive, but like I said, being on the river was wonderful and a reminder that you've got to push a little sometimes to make that summit and the view that can only be had from there. You know the view and your need for it, and you say to yourself that as a parent you'll never quit working for it, but the long haul does tire you, does transform you just a bit. You stop to rest on your pack more often. The matter is whether that change jades you, or strengthens and motivates you to find that view by other means.

J and R were as kind and helpful as could be, but you feel that friends without kids just can't know the condition you're in as a parent. They breeze after whatever whim pulls them, from mixing a drink to flirting on the deck to going after a game of whiffle ball in the drive, while there you are in your lawn chair, pinioned by a sleeping baby in your lap, grateful as a beggar to whoever brings you another beer. Not that I'm complaining. I've had twenty years of that, counting back to high school. And while you can't get enough of those carefree days, they never come close to the good deep loving feeling of being pinioned by a sweet baby in your lap, her eyes glimmering as she wakes from a nap and smiles up at the leaf shadows in the trees.