Shelter in Place, February 1, 2021
This morning John managed to snag one of maybe a hundred vaccine appointments at our local clinic, while I kept refreshing the link in vain hopes of doubling our luck. Downtown together with plenty of time to wait for his appointment, we visited the nearly empty SalesForce park, four stories above the street, its lovely, long green walkways flanked by small mini-gardens that represent each continent. Here, South African protea frame one of the city’s tallest towers.
It would have been nice if we both had gotten our first vaccine together today, but at least John’s jab gets us 25% of the way towards safety. I’ll take it, even as I keep on refreshing the website through the night and into the wee hours of the morning hoping that maybe, just maybe, things are looking up!
Day 313: On the Edge
Shelter in Place, San Francisco, January 30, 2021
We’ve had two inches of rain this week and yet the volume is still only 50% of what we need to have a normal summer. The window gets ever smaller for replenishing the city’s water supplies and damping down surrounding forests in time for summer’s usual drought and autumn’s fire season (in December the rain was sparse enough that we saw fire warnings in this neck of the woods, very rare this time of year). So, heavy rain is welcome, though it brings trouble of its own beyond the gloomy sky above our house and garden. Just south of us - where the fires bared the hills last summer, people are being evacuated in anticipation of sudden mudslides yet to come. And a little further down, a remote and winding portion of the highway opened up and washed right into the the ocean.
California, I am still learning, is not just a land of opportunity; it is a mountain of trouble and, it seems, we live continually on the edge.
Day 310: The Circle Game
Shelter in Place, San Francisco, January 27, 2021
We are getting to the full-circle point where nearly every day will remind us of something we were doing just before the pandemic landed in our laps - “normal life,” the eventful and uneventful things that happened before we knew that everything was about to change. I am reminded of this irony as I pick Meyer lemons this morning to make a cake. There were ripe ones (not quite so many) a year ago, hidden far beneath the branches and waiting for a chance to share a cake with friends.
A year ago today John and I got word that our China trip had been delayed, a full cross-country celebration of the TransAntarctica expedition’s 30th anniversary, postponed until September because there was a virus spreading in a place called Wuhan - not on our itinerary, but close enough to warrant caution and a pause in planning such a whirlwind of events (of course, September came and went without renewing all those plans).
This week is the anniversary, too, of my last trip to casually meet up with friends in Seattle where, unbeknownst to us, the virus had also just arrived. How little we suspected what was to come. How ‘normal’ it felt to be together for a weekend, laughing in the kitchen, toasting each other by firelight, and planning more visits in the year to come.
It’s hard to anticipate such freedom and adventure anymore and dangerous to hope too much that ‘normal’ will return anytime soon. Living in the moment is safer now. So as the calendar moves round full circle, we will celebrate the little things - like baking a lemon cake to cheer us on a cold, wet California morning, and remembering again how lucky we are to have each other and a place called home.