Pieces from the emails I wrote and sent in October of 2008.

Well, I’m finally clawing back up from oblivion and able to take a few moments to chat. Honestly I don’t know why I’m having such a problem resurfacing – it feels like September was a ride down a really steep crazy slide and October is the deep ball pit I landed in and sank all the way to the bottom.

I’m not sure where any of that came from and you’re sweet to pretend it was relevant. Did I mention I’ve taken cold medicine?

Right now I’m finishing up Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein so I can read Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. And this was after reading Spook by Mary Roach and 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill, so I guess you can see where my head has been lately. I think I’ve been trying to rediscover God in some strange and dark places, honestly.

So James concert (where I could have been) in San Francisco was October 1, Shane’ work (where I will probably be) in San Francisco on October 19, Neil Gaiman (where I wanted to be) reading chapter 6 of the Graveyard Book in San Francisco October 5. Oh well, if I had been there it might have turned out to be one of those “And now I can die” moments, and really, I’m only 36. I’d like to keep going a little longer, really.

So, really, the whole thing with my mother was largely a mild bump on the trauma scale – I think at this point I’m still finding myself surprised to be surprised by the depths of her selfishness, but I’m also much faster at bouncing back from the hits. I mean, let’s face it, no one really thought that seeing my psychotic mother once a bloody week was going to be easy, or was even necessarily in my best interest, but I had to try, I suppose.

And of course it’s a complicated story to relate, like most family stories probably are, because what sounds on the surface like a mildly trying conversation generally has incredible amounts of back-story and conditioning and button installations and ritual sacrifices along the way that sort of build, layer upon layer, into something much bigger and uglier than one remark.

First little bit of silliness – when we were out at my mother’s house yesterday I noticed that it was finally our one week of fall here in Oregon, so I went out in her yard to try to grab some pictures. And I very literally walked right into a fairy ring. You know how they say that in places where the toadstools grow in a circle the fairies meet? I’ve looked for them all my life (the rings, not the fairies. Well, okay fine, both) and never seen one, and yesterday I just happened to look down and I was in the center of one. It was very, very cool.

My favorite thing about San Francisco is that you can turn a corner into magic at any time. And my kids want to know what’s coming. They want a plan. They want predictable. They are me, in any other city, at any other time in my life, basically. But in SF I want to wander, I want to take 50 pictures of the same damn building, I want to sit and contemplate the Jackson Pollack, I want to enjoy the freaking view! I really didn’t get any of that on this last trip, or if I did it was in tiny little snatches in between pep talking and keeping track of everything.

It’s like how you can’t really see your own kids grow because you’re with them every day, but someone who only sees them every few months will notice humongous changes. Seeing my kids through the eyes of San Francisco I can see the giant changes for myself, comparing from trip to trip. Khy and Stormy have very clearly crossed that blessed line of reason and compromise where they have some awareness of needs that exist beyond their own. They understand time constraints. Khy worked nearly as hard as I did to keep everyone cheered and upbeat. And Nicky – well, he sees the line. He dances along it now, which is a big improvement. There were still some days when he would moan and complain that he had to walk more than a block to find a McDonald’s, insist that he was about to starve to death any second, and then refuse to eat anywhere else that we passed. But there were also days like the trip to the Museum of Modern Art, where he was a genuinely fun companion.

So I let the kids play, Khy happy to stay out of the water but Storm and Nicky rolling up their pants legs to wade in. To be fair, I knew what I was risking, letting them play in sand and surf with no towels or changes of clothing and a bus ride, train ride and car ride away from both, but it was one of the few moments of serenity on that trip where I felt like I would make it work, whatever happened, and I just needed to say yes to something. And making it work was pretty much what I had to do, because while I managed to squeeze in a little oohing and ahhing and picture snapping and ashes spreading and sunset enjoying while watching out for my kids and taking stressed out calls on the cell from Shane who had taken the wrong bus 30 and I had the bus map, I wasn’t watching quite close enough and Nicky got covered in sand and wet.

So we trudged up to the spray off place by the bathrooms. It had a button for a low one just for feet and legs, and a higher one for whole body. I got to work spraying off the kids and Storm wasn’t too bad but Nicky was a problem. He’s wearing wet, sand covered jeans that are beginning to feel like sand paper and in that moment I KNOW he isn’t going to last dinner, a bus ride and a train ride in that condition. (Did I mention he was also having an eczema flare up? Not a great time for sand rubbing against skin.) So I looked him seriously in the eyes and said, “Can you just pretend for me tonight that your boxers are real shorts so I can take these jeans off of you?” He, thankfully, agreed. So I stripped off his jeans, sent him back over to rinse his legs a little better. He pushed the top button accidentally and soaked his t-shirt. At that point all I could do was laugh, really, which stopped his freak out in it’s tracks and soon we were all laughing. Good news – I actually DID have a change of shirt for him. That plus his hoodie because the sun had set and it was getting a little cooler, and later he walked nonchalantly into the Hard Rock Cafe wearing his boxers and Khy’s socks pulled up to his knees.

Anyway, ages later, after I had finally gotten Nicky squared away, I started helping Storm dry off and reshoe. We were sitting on benches that are right next to the spray, so the next people who come up to use the spray are just right next to us, basically, we’re just out of range of the water and barely. And the next people are two very French, very loud and boisterous, very buff and attractive young men. Probably in their early twenties. And they step up to those water sprays, and they strip right down to their tight little boxer briefs and they pull soap out of nowhere and they start to shower for real, basically. And they take their time, too.

And this isn’t me being prudish, it was just so surreal! And you should have seen the mortified looks on my children’s faces. I just kept thinking, God I love San Francisco.

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