San Francisco

Phew! We got a good night's sleep and we woke up without any residual symptoms. That was just one weird episode.

We drove one hilly mile to Rasa's house and had such a nice visit with her. Usha stopped in to say hello but she had to hurry out to a yoga class. She is a yoga teacher who made it through covid, teaching on Zoom, and now she works for a big corporation and no longer has to do all the work around the edges that happens when you work for a small business -- opening the studio, setting up, signing people in, cleaning up afterwards. She worked for many years in those independent studios and while she misses some of that, she is glad to have more support. Jon and I haven't seen Usha since she was 13 years old (we so clearly remember her getting ready to leave for school, lying down on her back on the couch so she could put her skin tight jeans on, but refusing to button them until the very last minute so they would be as tight as possible). She now has an 18 year old son who is in his first year of college and she misses him terribly. Rasa says it is wonderful to have Usha living in the house they renovated in the back yard over ten years ago.

Rasa, 89, is as sharp as ever, even though she had a minor stroke about five years ago. She finished her last book a year ago and decided to self-publish it to skip over all the other steps. It is a memoir which took her ten years to write. She said she is happy with how it came out and she gave us a copy. We will read it. We talked about Israel -- she thinks that Israel is intent on killing all the Palestinians. She has been a peace activist all her life and would have gone to a peace march recently except that she doesn't trust herself to be strong enough. She is rational and clear-thinking and her biggest regret right now is how useless she feels. She is just about the oldest person she knows now and she says she misses talking to people who have lived the same slice of life as she has. And still Rasa feels lucky to be healthy and able to go hiking in Marin County with a friend, to go to the farmers market every week. Usha reminds her to be careful going up and down the stairs, telling her it would be a calamity to fall. It feels like Rasa will continue to live in her comfortable house, climbing all those stairs to the second floor where she lives, for a long time. I love talking to her and I hope we can come and see her again.

We drove up the steep hill to Sarita's. It was a clear, sunny day and the view from her windows is stunning, flattening all the hills of San Francisco because she lives at the top of Twin Peaks. We hung out, catching up. After a quick snack, we headed out to Ocean Beach to see the Pacific, and then up to Lands End for a view from higher up. Next time we come out here, we will hike up one of those trails. We didn't leave ourselves enough time because we had a dinner date at 4:30.  

We drove back to the Mission to meet James and Howard for dinner at a small Vietnamese restaurant. It was an early dinner because Howard needed to go to a shiva at the temple. It was so nice to see James -- he and Sarita just got officially married yesterday, with Howard as the officiant. Jon and I came out to SF in October for the first wedding celebration, and it was just a coincidence that we were here again on the same weekend as the state-acknowledged wedding. They are very happy. 

 

The view from Sarita's is equally stunning every time, when it's clear.