Death, the Ocean, and Your Mother
I met up with my dad at Civic Center station to go on a walk. It was the first time we had seen each other after I had moved to Berkeley three weeks earlier, a late morning in March right before my 24th birthday. He was dressed in white ill-fitting baggy slacks, beaten up white tennis shoes with velcro straps, a white zip up hoodie, and a t-shirt underneath depicting a cartoon version of him shouting “where’d I put the MP3?!” while holding a small black voice recorder in his hand. His students had made it custom for him, and it is still one of his favorite shirts.
We never really go to Civic Center. It’s not that convenient for either of us, but both of us decided not to drive. He planned to take the N and I would take BART and that was the place we were most likely to be able to find each other without a round of “where are you; I don’t see you? I’m near the Walgreens. What Walgreens? The one near the corner. I’m near the corner” etc. etc. The only things I had really gone to Civic Center for was to contest a parking ticket or see a show once every six years at the Orpheum. Or go to Ananda Fuara, which is run by a textbook new-age 80s cult that my old friend Max’s mom used to be a big part of until she was kicked out. Or, of course, the little Vietnamese spot I never remember the name of, but it’s half a block down sixth and has a big yellow sign. They’ll always find a way to seat you even when they are seven people past their max capacity sign. Order the imperial rolls, tip well, and don’t ask questions.
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Aba and I started walking west down Market Street, the aim to go as far as we could together before our feet or patience gave in. I hadn’t been inside Bill Graham Auditorium since my high school graduation, and I think Amy Tan was the commencement speaker, but I might be making that up. The speaker’s first name was Amy but I’m sure I’d have a stronger memory of it if it was actually Amy Tan. It probably wasn’t Amy Tan but when I think of standing in public at a major milestone in my life, being scolded for being an ungrateful daughter in front of my friends, I think of her quiet and frustrated protagonists struggling for self-preservation. My dad and I are better with each other when we’re walking.
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We turned right on Hayes and walked slowly down, aba asking me to read him the signs on colorful buildings and me talking to him about my new job in West Berkeley and my new apartment in South Berkeley and how I just bought myself a bike from this guy at night in front of a public library in Richmond. It was a shitty bike with no hand brakes and just one speed, cobbled together from stolen parts, but it was $80 and bright yellow and nobody was going to steal it because it was so janky. No, my apartment didn’t come with parking, and yes, next time I’ll look for an apartment that comes with parking but really, I believe we shouldn’t have cars because of climate change. But also, yes, it would be better if parking was cheaper and didn’t take so long and how bad is the traffic along 19th these days? I hate how hypocritical I can be. I get it from him.
We talked about cars more than we ever had before, because he had given me his ten-year-old PT Cruiser as a gift for my New and Employed Life in Berkeley. I soon named the car Saul because he had the personality of an old Jewish man with a small bladder and a lot of strange noises that you don’t actually need to worry too much about but that he wants you to know are part of his life and now are part of yours. I loved Saul. He may not have been able to go past 50 on the freeway on a three-degree hill, but he had fully seven windshield wiper settings, and that’s got to count for something. I loved that he was sensitive but sturdy. That he had been dinged and scratched but that just meant you could recognize him from a block away. He died in December 2019, sputtering out of life on Highway 1 heading back from Pacifica, just shy of his 13th birthday when I had been planning on throwing him a car mitzvah. It was his third death in three months, and this time he couldn’t be revived.
My aunt would have told me that it was an omen, and I would have replied that it was just an old car, and an American one at that. Eval has always been the one to teach me about our superstitions, half-jokingly but only half. The premise is that there are very evil but very stupid and easily distracted sheydim, demonic spirits watching everything we do, waiting for the chance to strike. Spit three times both when you hear particularly good or bad news so the sheydim think your good news is bad news and won’t mess with you. Tfu, tfu, tfu. Put salt in the pockets of new clothes, so they don’t hide there. Bring jam to a housewarming so they will get distracted and eat it instead of causing trouble. My favorite is the rolling. The story goes that when the messiah comes to restore the temple of Jerusalem in the year 6,000, everyone who was buried as a good Jew will be able to roll through a series of underground tunnels and pop up in Jerusalem — bodies and souls restored. That’s why we buried my great-grandma Leah in a shroud instead of a coffin, to make the Great International Rolling of the Corpses easier. You can make anything into an omen in hindsight, I guess.
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Hayes Valley was exactly what you think of when you think of San Fran. Modern trimmings on old buildings, Warby Parker glasses, quinoa burgers with truffle sauce, pancakes that cost $18, and fresh murals with color blocks and single words like BREATHE or BIRDS or phrases like LOOK UP or BE A GOOD PERSON.
Almost two years earlier J and I had our first date at the beer garden on Hayes and Octavia, followed by old fashioneds at Brass Tacks, which is described on Google Maps as “industrial chic with craft cocktails”. I had never had an old fashioned and thought he was rather sophisticated for ordering one. The inside was warm and made to look like a weathered Parisian brasserie even though it opened in 2013, replacing Marlena’s which had drag shows on Saturdays and an opulent Christmas shrine in the corner year-round and $5 PBR Jim Beam specials.
We had met a week earlier on the second floor of Neck of the Woods on Clement, me looking like shit after a long day at work and arriving an hour and a half before anyone I knew. I was less than a week back from New Zealand and still jet-lagged, trying to reconnect with my old coworkers by showing up to one of their cousin’s garage band’s first-ever shows. The bar was filling up and buzzing with scruffy local bands playing three-song sets the whole night. I’m never more lonely than when I’m surrounded by people, and nobody notices I’m there.
Deep breath, there would be none of that attitude tonight. I’ve made it back in California and I was there to listen to music and spend time with my coworkers and not be at home. I wasn’t starting from scratch again this time. I’ve had practice with this. Tfu tfu tfu. So I walked up to someone who wasn’t already talking to other people, who looked around my age, and said, Hello. I don’t have any friends. He tilted his head. I mean, my friends aren’t here yet. I’m waiting for them. He smiled and untilted. We started going back and forth, apologizing for missing half of each other’s sentences.
He asked where I was from. Here. Oh really? Not a lot of people I meet are actually from here. How about you? L.A. Oh, I’m sorry. Jake turned to face me fully, and I realized that I had deeply offended him. Sheepishly, I offered, Sorry. Instinct. Hey, so fun fact, pirates were actually the first ones to institute modern-day socialism, did you know that? He laughed and we kept going. A week later we were sitting in a reclaimed wood booth at this “industrial-chic with craft cocktails” bar, drinking our old fashioneds, talking fast because we needed to learn everything there was to know about each other, consuming each other’s presence until it was time to catch the last trains home in opposite directions.
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Dad and I passed Brass Tacks, sporadically breaking the silence with a comment about how new everything was. We pulled into a cheery green store that just sold macarons. He asked for hot chocolate to go with his macaron. Sorry, we don’t have any drinks, she said in a customer service voice. “Not even hot chocolate?” No, no drinks, just macarons. “What about tea?” No, just macarons, sir. She kept her customer service voice and I put on my kindergarten teacher voice and said “aba how about we get some macarons and get tea somewhere else and sit outside?” Trying to steer him toward an end goal before he inevitably asked if they had chai.
We reached Laguna and he instinctively went left. This place, he knew. I could see his eyes filling with memories, not seeing what was there in that moment but taking in the shape of the street, its narrow sidewalks and shady trees, its Victorians with their never-ending steps and their bay windows and delicate trims unchanged except for the paint. Our muscles were warm from the hill, our faces flushed. We reached the Zen Center on the corner of Laguna and Page, its brick left unharmed by the Loma Prieta. We knocked on the door and a short, friendly woman opened it.
Hi, I used to come here all the time. I used to be a healer here in the 70s and 80s. Can we come in? The halls echoed, and it smelled like pandan. We couldn’t enter the meditation room because people were in there but he told me that some people meditate there for eight or ten hours a day, which still blows my mind. I can’t go 45 minutes without saying something out loud; how do people do it for a whole day? What do you think about for eight or ten hours a day? Do you think, or is the point not to think? The community board had postings about sharing dinner and music lessons and volunteer opportunities. We took a deep breath together, and turned around.
When my dad first came to San Francisco in 1976 he was 21, barely spoke English, and legally blind. The Zen Center is where he found his home, where scrappy lost souls volunteered in exchange for a sleeping mat and three meals a day. The neighborhood was made for the era of neo-noir, with broken lamp posts and dark alleys and daily muggings and whispers of murders and trick houses and ghosts. According to my dad, Hayes Valley changed when young queer couples spread north from the Castro and a group of bears formed a neighborhood watch, chasing down muggers with baseball bats. Eventually, aba and some of his Zen Center friends started a house together in one of the Victorians across from the mini-market. It was blue and gray and falling apart and loud and cheap.
My dad has lived in the city for 44 years but hadn’t been to Hayes Valley in nearly 30. What happened to your friends here, aba? Why did you leave?
Death, the ocean, and your mother.
