The heart is a muscle
I was trying to explain to Tin that his world is expanding as we flew to San Francisco to go to a friend’s son’s bar mitzvah. Tin does not do well with greetings and new people and there could be an underlying reason for that as he was shuffled around as an infant and perhaps he “greets” people smiling at him and trying to introduce themselves with the trepidation it deserves. But as we were going to be meeting a lot of people and greetings were in order, I introduced to him the ever expanding universe he is living in with us at the core then his kindergarten family, his New Orleans family, his Spain family, his Croatian family, his Atlanta family and now his San Francisco family. It seemed to have done the trick because he was a much better greeter than he has been before.
But as his world was expanding, mine was shrinking, as I came full circle with a journey I began decades ago when I left New Orleans for San Francisco. We arrived at the Hilton straddling Chinatown and North Beach and the view gave way to Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill and the bay beyond.
I have mentioned to Tin several times that our name, Dangermond, is my married name and even though I am no longer married to the man I kept his name – so I also mentioned on this trip that Steve would be there and he would meet him. From our hotel room, I pointed out Coit Tower and told him Steve and I had gotten married there a long time ago. “What happened to Steve?” he asked. “We broke up,” I told him. “Like you and Mama,” he said. “Exactly,” I said.
We walked down to the bay to see the sea lions and I had a strong deja vu of having gone down there with my niece, Miracle Baby, when she was the same age as Tin. That was before her father was sent to prison for the second time. That was, as my sister-in-law said, in happier times, when there wasn’t so much water under the bridge. I took Tin to the same store for Lefty’s that we had taken her to and bought him a pair of left-handed scissors.
We then had a lovely Thanksgivukkah with our Jewish friends and the next day, went to Friday night services at Temple Emanuel where we were treated to a play about Hanukkah, as well as songs about Hanukkah, and a very very very short service – right up my alley. The next morning was the bar mitzvah and although the service was longer, I caught one of those images suspended in a time warp where I was watching my friends called to the altar, now parents of a 13-year-old boy called to his bar mitzvah – I watched them speaking at the bema to their son and a newfound realization sprang in my thoughts that despite the odds, and I wouldn’t have put them in their favor, that they have clung to each other and carved out a life unlike others who had seemed more adroit at this strange institution – here were my friends as husband and wife and child – parents – sparkling careers – the whole nine yards – all of them crossing a threshold in their lives and us, the spectators left to gage our own shortcomings and achievements in the mirror they held up.
I don’t remember growing older, when did they?
At the end of the service, the kids were called up for the aufruf whereby they are given candy to throw at the bar mitzvah’d child. Tin marched right up there as if he had been doing it his whole life and watching him made me question seriously whether the decision to not raise him Jewish is a sound one.
At the end of our trip, I was extraordinarily grateful to see people I love happy – my friends who hosted us, Steve and his partner, my friend who runs the dry cleaners on Columbus Avenue, and the several gal pals I visited with who are not with partners now but who are strong and vibrant and welcoming of love in their lives. It was a good trip, a fine roundtrip to come home from and fall into my own bed and sleep without any tangled thoughts of whether I should have done this or that because all that I did led me here, to now.
I am where I am supposed to be no matter how things may seem to appear. The heart is a muscle and the more you use it, the bigger it grows.
