Tuesday, May 17, 2011
San Francisco: A Lady in Grey
Momma - Good morning!
For the first time in a few weeks, the sun is not shining here in our new home town, and I have to say I like it like this.
First of all, it reminds me that I am not living in LA where there is rarely a day with anything but perfect blue skies, and after a while, such crystaline perfection gets even the doughtiest spirit down. I used to feel ashamed if my spirit did not match the optimistic energies of that blue sky,and it made me feel even worse.
But the gracious San Francisco has the good sense to remind us that none of us is actually perfect, and that even the country's most beautiful city (she immodestly knows this is true about herself) has its days when mufti is the perfect thing. She does look gorgeous in this soft , misty grey that cloaks her this morning. And it makes me feel human. This is a town that measures us all to that human scale, and there is something about the water all around us that reminds one of where we come from, and that we all come from that same place. The Bay and the Ocean, ubiquitous in these parts, reminds us that Life is liquid and changeable, and that we are all in the swim of it, no matter what else divides us.
And where there is water, there is weather.
Weather is a large topic of daily discussion around San Francisco. It's behavior, it's seasonality, its moods, its rarities, its changeabilities, its quirks and its countenances are all things that people here love to tell other people about. Especially if the other people are newcomers to the city.
"Oh, you're lucky, it's not usually like this at this time of year," is a comment we have heard a lot since moving here.
"Just wait 'til Summer ! That's when you'll have your Winter!" is another remark people feel it's their duty to repeat more than once.
"You don't want to live over there in Sunset or Richmond. It's foggy over there ALL the time! Well, mainly in the Summer. But no....too much fog!" plead some.
"Just remember, when it's 110 degrees elsewhere, here it's nice and COLD in the Summer."
"Never put away your Fall /Winter stuff because you never know when it'll be cool by the Bay"
"Important to keep all your coats and sweaters available all year long."
"If it's foggy in the morning, it blows away by noon."
Those are just a few of the many weather-related things that seem to pepper daily conversation here.
And I've just about decided that weather is like another character in the on-going comedy/drama that is San Francisco: an ever-prsent character that never leaves the stage and that influences all the other characters in subtle , unwritten ways. I love this weather for that very presence.
I seek it out. I speak to it. I am its sister. I feel it and want it to guide me because it is so powerful, so true, so very itself, there is no other way but to relax in its powerful presence, go with it wherever it wants to take you. And sunshine is just one of its guises. It's faces are many. And, I like surprises.
Earthquakes are indeed part of its fashion repertoire, true. This scares me a little , and our little family of four discuss where we shall meet if we need to find each other when "it" happens - because I feel surely that "it" will happen sooner than later. But what better testimony to the power of this special "star" i our midst - this WEATHER - than its skill to upset the very ground we walk? Isn't that we all wish to do as actors? Change the perspective, upset the norm, change peoples' orientation to their own lives by the work we do? Take stage and shake things up? Stars do that. They have that particular power.
And here in this marvelous town, weather is , at the very least, a leading player.
I am a fan.
Adoringly,
Ev
Labels: Momma Letters SF
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Another Letter to Momma
Hi Momma - Below is a little essay I wrote about Mother's Day, as an assignment in my writing workshop a few months ago, and I thought this would be the good day to share it with you, and with all.
May 8, 2011
San Francisco
Mothers Day
Anna Jarvis from Grafton, West Virginia, is considered the “mother” of Mothers Day, since it was she who introduced the idea to the general public in 1908. Her goal was to simply honor all mothers.
President Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday in 1914, and with the considerable help of storeowner John Wanamaker, Mothers Day became the holiday on which more greeting cards and small gifts are sold than any other day of the year.
It became known as “the Hallmark Holiday”, and it eventually so disgusted Ms. Jarvis, (because people bought pre-made cards instead of taking the time and making the heart-felt effort to pen personal notes), that she officially “took back” her Mothers Day Idea in 1948.
That was the year I was born.
Great.
The year I was born, the mother of Mothers Day disowned her brainchild.
Which, on some psychic level, leads me to ponder why I never became a mother myself, and also why I never had the arrogance to believe that I fully understood my own. As a kid, I loved pretty packages neatly tied up with bows, but even young, I knew Motherhood was something too messy, contradictory and powerful to contain. Too bewildering to easily trust.
I mean, she was a whole person before I was ever born, a person in her own right, yet she seemed to forget all that and made me the center of everything she cared for to such a degree that she almost disappeared. I was all that mattered. It wasn’t until years later, when I was established in a life of my own, that I learned she loved red velvet curtains. She bought some for the first apartment she lived in alone after Daddy died. I never even knew she loved red. I don’t understand how I never knew that.
She had the audacity to take a lover after my father’s death. How could my Mother do that? Mothers don’t do that! Mothers don’t …y’know…. the sex thing! That was my specialty! But there they were: Mother and Albert! Doing it! A LOT!
(I remember now the hilarious night she and I shared a bottle of Scotch, and I made her say the word “fuck” out loud. I was in a Consciousness Raising class at Northwestern, and it was our holiday assignment to go home and cause a “revolution”: mine was to get my Momma to say a dirty word. She did, and it was marvelous in so many ways.)
And then, as she got nearer to dying, I grabbed onto that time in an effort to more thoroughly know this woman whose title had been “Evalyn’s Momma”, at least through my entire life, if not hers. I got a special tape recorder so I could have some audio to refer to on that inevitable day when I knew I would forget how she sounded. I spent two weeks out of every month in Chicago, to be by her side. It was then she told me something that made me happy and sad in the same instant: her only regret in dying was that she’d miss what happened next …..in my life. For some reason, that I understood . I also understood that I had been living my entire life for one audience and one audience only: my Momma.
And then – suddenly – there was no more time. My class in “ Momma” was over, and the bell had rung. I was so glad I’d used that tape recorder.
Motherhood is far too complex an undertaking to be honored or epitomized in the corny quatrains of a greeting card. To make one 24-hour period the “special time” to stop and consider this intricate matrix of circumstances, emotions, influences, relationships and consequences seems a peculiarly American thing to attempt, a fast-food approach to the most profound of undertakings: creating the Earth’s next human inhabitants. One lonely little day – sanctified by Congress or not- just doesn’t seem to do the job. In fact, like so many “quickies”, it’s just not satisfying on any level.
SO, along with Ms Anna Jarvis, I too take back “Mothers Day” and all the tacky baby blue, pink and frilly stuff I ever purchased. Every hand-made piece of junk I ever imposed on my Momma, I give her permission to posthumously toss! Instead, I will raise a glass of Scotch, in honor of the night she said a dirty word or two, and simply drink to a Life that, along with other mysteries, makes motherhood the way things are done to survive.
And Mothers? I say, let’s honor them every moment, every hour, every day, month and year, as long as we breathe. Above all, let’s remember them. For without them – and this isn’t hard to understand at all – without them, we are…..not.
Labels: Momma Letters SF
