I wasn't prepared for this

You love your friends and what matters to them matters to you, so of course you say yes when they invite you to come see their newborn baby. Of course. Over to the hospital you go. I am privileged to not be so familiar with these places but I recognize the elevator, the doors that open at the push of a button, the hallways that project medical ability, biological stability, hope’s reliability. Then into the room. Into her room.

And there she is. In her artificial womb of plexiglass and portals, wires and cables to monitors and screens, heartbeat over respiration over oxygen saturation and there is no normal but this one as you listen to the beep of alarm and watch it come back down to green before you breathe again.

Truth be told, promise not to tell? I generally think babies are kinda ugly. Amphibian creatures barely sapiens, born from a woman they promise but I’m tempted to look around for the spaceship retreating.

But this? This tiny person, swimming through the unfamiliar space of her newborn body, premature and perfect, this little girl is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And I scorn the scorn that whispers at the cliche because bugger me but it’s true.

And I don’t know what to say. She’s magnificent.

I’ve felt this way before, witnessing the small ones of kith and kin. Stood abashed before the splendor of creation. And I well remember the transcendent majesty of looking at my lady love’s son and feeling the gods’ gift of realizing “Yes, yes, for this I would die to protect.” And he wasn’t even mine.

And suddenly, on a normal Saturday night I’m feeling it again, the awe, the sheer dumbfounded reverence for what it is to bring a child into this world. Tomorrow I’ll rage at the idiocy that brings violence to remove them, as everyone is a child in someone’s heart, but for now I exist in little besides awe.

I am accustomed to seeing the Divine in Nature, the pulse of the universe in ocean waves, sand dune shifts, and sunlight through the leaves, but here I am in a concrete cave made by men and everywhere I look I see godliness. In the purpose of the space, the quiet skill and sleepless devotion of the staff, the faceless researchers who devise the tests and cures, and above all else: her, and the indomitability of her will to continue. What is god if not this newest person? Why would it be anywhere else?

Outside it’s a normal night. Cars each going to their own someplace, sports fans ribbing at each others laundry, friends talking too loudly on the lamplit street with words about nothing that manifest their love anyway. And it is a normal night. Another in the endless line of nights where somewhere nearby a miracle is breathing. And the awe overtakes me. I was ready to meet their child, but I was not prepared for this.

Friends

Tall and dark, their food was spiced differently and they spoke of a place called Yugoslavia that sounded exotic and sad. But it was all just texture for the aunt, uncle, and two cousins I grew up with. And it didn’t matter at all that instead of a genetic link of ancestry, we shared a history of morning drives towards afternoon picnics before evening dinners and piling into the streetlit car worn out and over-ready for bed. I referred to them as my “parallel family.”

Castle Rock with friends

We’d been family since before I was born. Back when our moms were college roommates. So I showed up for university with eyes wide for the first glimpse of the people who would someday be uncles and aunts to my own kids. No pressure. But impossible expectation is a supplementary explanation for why I am not in touch with anyone from my college years.

Within weeks of school starting, I was in a relationship that devoured most of my hours. Waking and sleeping. I basically lived in her apartment. (Is 15 years too late to send an apologetic fruit basket?) They were seven good years, but when they were over, they were gone with the girlfriend.

That was always my way. My romantic relationship had absolute primacy. Where I spent my time. If my She was unavailable, then I’d call up a friend. Familiar story, tragic mistake, but comfortable in the meantime.

So as I entered this phase of my life (single for the first time since...elementary school?) I resolved to do it differently. I just didn’t know what that would look like.

My turn

It looks like Mondays on rock climbing walls with East Bay friends. Tuesday Lebanese burrito in Dolores Park with my brother and his crew. Wednesday climbing with an amplified set of San Franciscans, before Thursday with my old roommate and his fiance. Friday’s Happy Hour will be well named for the company of friends from middle school, and Saturday we’ll socialize in the farmer’s market sunshine.

And the weekends? Driving to Point Reyes for green hillsides and ocean vistas before watching the sun set into my beloved Pacific Ocean, whose eternal beauty complements mortal friendships, whatever their scale.

Or drive down to Castle Rock to rappel down a granite slab then climb back up, sticking fingers in arachnid crevices and unknowable mammalian dens.

Or up to Tahoe, maybe snowshoeing, or a social maelstrom of mullet wigs, karaoke, and the conviction that no matter how weird the conversation gets, that’s cool.

Tahoe. Made sense at the time.

None of this is a shocking revelation. That friends are good. But that doesn’t lessen their importance. In our Social Media Age, murky medium of social isolation, I want to shout my gratitude for real human contact out into this inhuman ether, knowing it will reach the eyes of friends I’ve never met (yet?), and maybe even stir an additional gathering of friends or two.

Because whether we share genes or not, met in college or on the wall, with smiles or fonts, our lives are made richer by our Parallel Family.

Yes, it's a cat post

I’d seen cats hunting birds with ferocious ineptitude. I’d seen one climb the curtains with kitten claws and an “I’ve made a terrible mistake” expression. And I’d seen a cat sitting with absolute dignity despite the toupee of cobweb stuck on its head. All very normal feline behavior. But I’d never seen a cat worn like a scarf before.

My new apartment was fine, good location and a Japanese maple right outside my window, but it was when I met the neighbors that I realized I’d won the housing lottery. (Again.) The entire building was chock full of people I’d like to talk to, with just this one last neighbor to meet.

His name is Sullivan.

I’ve never met a cat I didn’t like (and only one dog) but this rather corpulent kitty took neighborly likability to a whole new level. And left me with the question, how did I survive three decades without learning about Maine coon cats? (Apparently they’re common in the best houses?)

I’m used to feline independence with the flavor of aloofness, but Sully’s self-sufficient roamings seem more like what he does while he’s waiting to run into you. And whereas I learned that each cat has a very specific set of regulations on exactly how you may be permitted to pet their majesty, with Sullivander? Anything goes.

He’s the only cat I’ve ever seen that doesn’t have to land on his feet. You can hold him upside down, he’s happy, then just sort of lay him down like a sandbag and he just...cooperates. Looks up at you to see what’s next.

When my lady’s five-year old comes to visit, and has the chance to practice getting to know an animal (allergies and modern schedules keep them out of his homelife) I could think of no better animal for it than the Sull-tan of Oakland. Those two fell in love immediately. And watching the two of them, I feel like purring.

My reply to my neighbor's text: "Is Sully with you?"

The Sullimander wanders the hallway like a love ambush, and the second I open my door will lynx slink through to take up puma possession of the premises. It is a battle to remove him, and one from which I don’t mind abstaining, just shove a shoe in the door so he can get out whenever he likes, and perhaps the best procrastination sessions of my life have been petting him until his purrs rebound off the walls and his drool of delight spatters my floor. Totally worth it.

But all good things must come to an end, and Sullivander Hollifield’s owners are moving out this weekend. I’ll miss the furry bugger, but am damn glad I got to meet him.

Happy New Year! From a crotchety and grateful old man.

Holiday decorations in Portland

I don’t automatically care all that much about New Year’s Eve. I’m not much of a drinker, and I get queasy if I’m not in bed by about 3:00 AM, so not a “proper” partier either. But this crotchety old man does respect the notion and beauty of marking the end of one year and beginning of another, even if the calendar is basically arbitrary (the solstice is a much more significant turning point, but I can handle two).

Also, NYE’s have an odd way of coming to represent the year, or at least mark the stage. There was the one way-back-when in Santa Cruz that I spent tortured by jealousy, followed a solar loop later by a party in Switzerland where the sense of freedom and possibilities was as tall as the Matterhorn. (But much warmer.) Then there was the year K and I spent in a beautiful place, and tried our fledgling best to talk about the problems we feared and felt...but failed. A calendar later came a New Year’s of loss, confusion, guilt and pain.

New Year's Day in Strasbourg

Last year I went to a club with friends. I’m as happy in a club as a leech in the desert, and I spent the evening wrestling dickish temptations to shout-talk to someone “How about we go someplace where impressions and experiences are more than single-dimensional celebrations of snap judgments and superficiality?” Or “This is to proper socializing as twitter is to a book.” Or the most succinct, the gutteral growl of the cranky. “Grrrrrrumble!” But I was there for my friends, and appreciated the chance to be near them, even if I could only hear their smiles.

This year I’ll miss those friends, unable to hug and/or high-five them (ever tried to do both at once?) but in a much more satisfying environment: the world. The one that feels real, and comes with more dimensions than I can perceive.

Haven't been to Cambodia yet, but Myanmar's close, right?

New Year’s Eve 2014 will find me somewhere in Cambodia. Not sure where, yet. Maybe I’ll have new road-friends, I hope so. But I’ll have my lady by my side, audible and tangible, and though I won’t be able to touch the loves and friendships I cherish in other countries, they will be there too, audible and tangible in my heart.

That feels like a pretty good way to start 2015.

My San Francisco Giants

I couldn’t remember the last time I went to a Giants game, but we definitely had a different president. That ain’t good, for a kid raised on Will Clark, Robbie Thompson, and (my personal favorite, the player whose cards I collected as a grubby-fingered youngling) Brett Butler.

So, back in the Bay Area after a few years among the baseball-deprived, the footie-fanatics, the soccer-seeking-savages, who think ERA is a brand name and OBP a medical disorder, going to a game was on deck. When I heard two of my dearest San Franciscans were going to marry each other, I looked at that beautiful union and thought “There’s an excuse to go to a Giants game.”

The park of my childhood was Candlestick, dug into the edge of San Francisco’s worst neighborhood, a fortress of cement so ominous it looked more like a Soviet mining camp than a stadium. We always peered down at the field from the nosebleed seats, even before I quite understood what that joke meant, but nachos never tasted as good as they did with those fog-chilled fingertips, and a paper cup of sickly sweet hot chocolate was too good for the gods.

Now we sat in a much nicer ballpark, where the fries come soaked in garlic, and beer has moved from an odor to a flavor. So close to the action, I could see the extent of the season’s beards, as well as the ubiquitous advertising, and paused a nostalgic moment to remember the days before branding conquered professional sports, and when prices were less punitive. Then the national anthem finished and my San Francisco Giants took the field.

The uniforms and the energy were the same, and musical queues still provoked their clap-response without my conscious action. The four note “up-down-up-down/Let’s Go Giants” plays and my hands smack out clap, clap, clapclapclap of their own volition. Pavlov’s palms.

A baseball game is the perfect place to hang out. It’s dull enough to allow time and space to sit back and focus on the company of friends, but irascible enough that at any moment you might have to jump up and scream yourself hoarse as that long fly ball decides whether or not to stay fair, or your leadoff hitter digs for two.

And in a world that seems increasingly contrived, political campaigns and international debacles seemingly orchestrated months in advance, baseball remains reliably unpredictable, where the worst team sweeps the best and the rookie strikes out the All Star. And in this Twitter-headed age that requires constant tension, you never know if you’re going to sit through a 0-1 sleeper, or a 9-10 festival of offense. The drama is so much more poignant when it’s real, unpredictable, out of anyone’s control. And this year’s last couple weeks to play have drama to spare, as both my Bay Area teams juggle the Wild Card.

Our game was...beautiful. The first third was a pitching battle, with moments of teasing promise, then clenching danger, and sighs of release when both came to naught. Bottom of the fourth and good solid baseball put the Giants up by 1. High fives until your hands tingle, and the throat needs a drink to cool it down again.

But top of the fifth, they tied it up with a solo shot to right; at least they earned it. More tension, pitches slapping into the catcher’s glove and cracks of the bat that open the eyes, but the side is retired. The seventh inning stretch must have relaxed the dugout too, because the bottom of the inning put us on top by one, again… But top of the ninth, they tied it up.

So. Here we were, in the sort of scenario imagined on playgrounds and vacant lots throughout the ages. Bottom of the ninth. Tie game. Two outs, one on, our star kid (I’m old now, I can call a 27-year old a ‘kid’, especially when he’s as fresh-faced as Buster Posey) walks up to the plate. He settles in. The sold out crowd stands. Fouls and balls, close calls and tricky takes, and it’s a full count. One more strike and we go to extra innings…

But instead it’s a high fly ball, going, going...veering towards the line...hard to tell from where we are...is it going to stay fair? The noise is already crashing when it lands in the seats, and the wave breaks. Beer is undoubtedly flying, somewhere, and no one cares. He rounds the bases while the bass vibrates our seats, and 41,503 people have both arms in the air, and a city is shouting.

We file out in the jubilant crowd, and I walk to the BART station in a steady flow of Giants jerseys, drifts of pot smoke, and the glitter and dance of the Bay Bridge’s nightly light show. Friends, my hometown, and a win for my team: it’s a mighty fine summer night in San Francisco.

"The Bay Lights" nightly show