A sentimental journey
This was the trip I always enjoyed, one that embraced me into the lifestyle of people who lived there.
I arrived in San Francisco on a Saturday night when it was really dark. The sun sets later there, usually doesn’t get dark until after eight. My closest friend Kim and her husband Joe were waiting for me. We drove to their new house in a gated community. They took me down to the basement to their big gorgeous guest room. But I didn’t have my bearings. I didn’t know how to turn on the heater downstairs. To stay alive I put on tons of sweaters and socks.
Next morning we went to Mass at a charming little church called Our Lady of the Wayside. The pews had cushions! They made being in church a lot more comfortable. I must talk to someone at home about this. Now they have padded the pews where you kneel but not where you sit. Maybe I can inspire someone to donate cushions to our little church.
Churches in the US are more convivial. Churchgoers are a community of friends. Two ladies whisper about a friend who had an injury. There were also whole families — father, mother, married son and daughter-in-law, each with a little baby in tow, and three single girls. All of them devoutly at Mass together.
After Mass, Kim brought me to The Village Bakery and recommended that we order French toast. It was the most delicious French toast I have ever tasted. Instead of being sort of soggy, it was crisp, evenly glazed on both sides with cinnamon sugar. It was superb and fattening but neither of us cared. We are both growing old. At our age, given a choice between a great meal and a beautiful figure, of course we will choose the meal. We may never taste it again. But who is mad enough to appreciate our figures today?
After breakfast Kim walked me around their new place. They had just moved in last August. The property sits on a hill so they have a view of a sprawling metropolis and beyond that the sea. She has a deer herd living somewhere down the hill on one side. One morning on our way out to shop, we saw one who looked at us with curiosity. This makes Kim take care of choosing the flowers she plants in her garden. They cannot be what the deer like to eat.
There is what she calls a playground with a gazebo and a swing and a 500-year-old oak tree. On the right side the property dips into a gully. Joe has installed a system of cameras so he knows whenever anyone who is not from their house is down there. He told me he has seen a mountain lion, a fox with some animal, probably a chipmunk in its mouth, running around in the garden.
Initially I was afraid that my room in the basement might attract a gardener to peep in. But I was so wrong. It might have been in the basement of the house but that basement was still one floor up from the ground.
Kim was the most fabulous hostess. We became very close friends when I first went to San Francisco in the ‘80s to see my daughters through college. Then we had a coterie of close friends. Two of them belonged to the media, two of them were therapists, two of them were Filipinos who decided to live there. Kim got me to see all of them. We sat together, talked about old times and new, laughed a lot. She cooked delicious meals and had the energy to serve us all. Kim is one of those very rich women who seem to be totally unaware of how rich she is. She is half Filipino, the other half American. Her husband Joe is totally American but we totally enjoy each other’s company.
My holiday sort of divided into two. The first week I spent with one bestfriend, Kim, who took me to the drugstore, to Safeway, to stores to buy fake cacti that she would use for a party she would throw after I left. All these activities reminded me of what life was like in San Francisco when I lived there. At times when I was in bed waiting for sleep, I would think that this was the trip I always enjoyed, one that embraced me into the lifestyle of people who lived there.
I was never one for sightseeing. Sightseeing might move me at the moment but it hardly ever stays in my memory. What stays in my memory is what Kim said, what Joe taught me, how I loved the Burmese meal we ate in Burlingame where I used to live, or that tofu steak with truffles that made my eyes roll with pleasure. Those are the real times. Those are the times that turn this simple trip into a real sentimental journey. Those are the times I will remember until I die.
* * *
Please text your comments to 0998-991-2287.
