CityMama™

WISTERIA LANE

Everytime I see wisteria now, I will be reminded of Portland. The wisteria vine on our deck in San Francisco is in bloom which means that it must also be blooming in Portland.

Our front porch in Portland should be covered in new wisteria leaves now. It's one of the things that sold me on the house. The wisteria trunk twists and turns up the porch post and its branches spread out over the porch like a purple and green, leafy roof. In the summer, there is no more pleasant place to be than on the porch swing under the shady vines.

This weekend we return to Portland for the first time since we left almost four months ago. Spring is when Portland is at its best and I can't wait to see it.

The main reason for going is to check on our house and do a little bit of work on it that we didn't have time to finish before we moved. I also need to collect items that we should have brought with us like the next round of Bunny's hand-me-downs for Wallie to wear and some beloved toys.

It will be weird seeing our house again knowing that we are preparing to hand it over to someone else soon. If we had moved to any other city we probably could have kept it, but we didn't, so we can't. It's okay. I think I feel myself breaking free of Portland's grasp. But every time I see wisteria from now on, I will be immediately transported back to Portland, and my cute, yellow house with the porch swing.

(top photos: Bunny in Portland age 2; bottom photos: Bunny in San Francisco age 3.75)

UNDER MY SKIN

Perhaps you've already guessed that I am not a fan of nature. I've tried to appreciate sunsets and waterfalls and shit, but, really? I'd rather be at home with my nose in a book sipping a little Lillet with orange.

Which is why, as we were touring the East Bay this morning, I was surprised by the strange jolt that hit me as soon as we turned onto a tree-lined street (one of many) in a North Berkeley neighborhood. The lacy canopy of trees just getting their new leaves, and the verdant, overgrown yards so soaked with rainwater that rivulets trickled out onto the sidewalks, took my breath away they reminded me of Portland so much. Standing on the sidewalk a few blocks from Solano Avenue, I looked around and felt like I was back in Portland.

It was at that very moment that I realized how deeply Portland had sunk into my pores. Call it a shock to the system or a wake up call of sorts. I finally knew why I felt so unsettled in San Francisco, and it's not the house we are renting or the prospect of shitty public schools or anything else that I've been trying so fucking hard to attribute it to.

Anyone that has ever spent time in Portland will understand what I am talking about. It's the green that has gotten under my skin.

We drove circles around Berkeley and parts of Oakland vibing heavily. We bought a raffle ticket for a quilt. We looked at tie-dyed fairy clothes. We got out of the car in North Berkeley and within one block two different people—complete strangers—spoke to me. That doesn't happen in San Francisco, and I realized that I missed that, too. The feeling of being so connected with a community and the people in it that you can just talk to anyone because they likely feel the same.

"Oooh! I tried to get one of those, but they were all gone," exclaimed a woman admiring my tangerine-colored Target tote. No need for backstory, I knew what she talking about immediately. "I know! I got the last one on the rack!" We shared a laugh over my luck of the shopping draw.

"Cute dress," another woman said to Bunny as she bent down to pick her third dandelion of our walk. Bunny scrunched her nose up at the woman, startled that anyone would dare talk to us.  In San Francisco it's eyes down, keep walking, all the time. "Thanks," I said on Bunny's behalf.

What is this place they call Berkeley?

I do know that I saw more wicking fabric and waterproof shoes than I have since we left Stumptown three months ago. I guess I am at home when I am surrounded by trees, fleece, and knit-beret-wearing-ladies with crazy hair.  And this realization, though strange and so seemingly anti-me, is the most comforting feeling I've felt in a long, long time.

FAR EAST

Spent some time in Oakland this morning visiting an old friend and her two kids.  She has a little boy Bunny's age and a five month old baby girl that I hadn't met yet. It was nice to see her, as always, and she gave me the scoop on her Oakland neighborhood. She loves where she lives, but Oakland schools aren't great. They are thinking of private schools.

One of the coolest things about her neighborhood is the "Casual Commute." She lives around the corner from a main drag, and people who live in Oakland but work in San Francisco will park their cars on her street and stand on the corner to wait for a ride to take them into downtown San Francisco. Once the car has three people in it, off they go and they can take advantage of the carpool lane all the way to the Bay Bridge. To get home, they can either catch a reverse Casual Commute or hop the express bus back across the bridge. I find this concept intriguing.

Most of the time, I need an excuse to go to the "East Bay," as it's called here. You cross a horrendously trafficky bridge (the only time it's not jammed is at 3AM) and then emerge on the other side facing a tangle of freeways that go to places that I'm not familiar with. As long as I am within San Francisco or driving down the peninsula (about 30 minutes south of San Francisco where I grew up) I am fine.  I know all the landmarks: keep the ocean on one side, bay on the other.

But the East Bay is confusing and foreign to me. I don't know the cities. Don't know what the numbers of the freeways mean. The two biggest cities in the East Bay closest to San Francisco are Oakland and Berkeley. I've always associated Oakland with: 1) crime, 2) shipyards, and 3) Too $hort. Berkeley is, well, you know. But as Twizz pointed out, Berkeley does have Alice Waters.

Which reminds me, does anyone reading this live in Berkeley that could tell me more about it? Can you email me?  I feel like of the two cities, I know Oakland a bit better.

When I asked my friend Bad Kitty if she thought I could live in Berkeley she said:

You're always a DUI away from anything fun in the city, and...just wait
until you get a heavy dose of "more vegan than thou" added to the mix.
As in: "Oh, do you compost or use worms?"

She's got a point.

When J. and I first moved to San Francisco in 1997 (wow, almost 10 years ago) I thought I could never live anywhere else. But then we moved to Portland and I fully embraced it and made it home. The only thing I care about right now is not moving for a long (long) time, so I want the next place we live to be right.

I want there to be space enough for our family to really (I mean really) put down roots. I want to finally unpack my wedding china, not leave it in a box (from 2 moves ago) because I think we'll be moving again. I want to choose paint colors that I like and not have to think about resale value. If we do chose a place with a yard, I want to plant a garden and live in the house long enough to see if it actually develops the way I had envisioned it would. I want to know my neighbors and the people at the coffee shop and it would be so nice if I could walk the girls to school.

We only have a few months more in this rental before we have to be out. And I think I am finally starting to panic a little.
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Sirius update: On my way to Oakland this morning I caught some of Alexis Stewart and Jennifer Hutt's radio show "Whatever." It was "F.U. Friday" and, in a word, it was: brilliant. I think I have a chick crush on Alexis. She doesn't give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of her and I dig that.

She was talking this morning about being at LAX and seeing one of the prosecutors who put Martha (her mom) in jail. (Such a travesty!) She said she stood there saying "I hate that guy" loud enough for "Hot Guy" next to her to hear her and talked with Hot Guy about how she'd like to push the prosecutor down the escalator. I guess on past shows she's talked about how she had no idea what the fuck was going on on The Apprentice and how she slept with some random cameraman from the show. She is my new favorite person in the whole wide world.

And I could "What. ev. er" for daaaaaayyyyys.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Now that we've started our house-hunting, we are faced with a dilemma. No, not a dilemma, but, let's say, an "issue." The "schools" issue. (I've just said the dirtiest word in all of San Francisco.)

First the back story for those that aren't familiar. (I'll try to be brief.) Unlike in most cities, there is no such thing as going to your neighborhood school in San Francisco. For many people, buying a home in a good school district is a top consideration. (Even if you don't have kids, for resale value, right?) Here it doesn't matter. You could live in a low-income area and be sending your kid to a school surrounded by multi-jillion-dollar gated mansions.

In San Francisco, families wanting to send their children to a public school are entered into a city-wide lottery system. You indicate your top choices, and then based on an arbitrary set of criteria (including mother's highest level of education completed), you hope you get into one of them. You could be sent anywhere in the city, either to the elementary school down the block or the one clear across town. This is all part of some court-ordered desegregation scheme. I hear that now that the schools are (supposedly) more mixed-up, this plan is supposed to end, but not for a couple more years.

When we moved to Portland, school district was one of the things we considered when we bought our house. The school Bunny would have attended is consistently top-rated. When we closed escrow on our house, we breathed a sigh of relief that we would never have to face the San Francisco public school lottery nightmare.

Hahaha.

So now, here we are. Bunny has one more year of preschool left, and then it's on to kindergarten. On the one hand, having been a teacher, I know it's not about the school, it's about the teachers. There are good and bad teachers in every school. And high test scores? You can often read between the lines on that one. Having been a teacher, I fully support public education. I believe that if more people sent their kids to public schools, then more people would be willing to help fix the problems...which means a better chance of them getting fixed.

Simplistic? Yes. But at the heart of it is the fact that families should feel invested: in education, in their communities, in their children's futures, in our country's future. Shitty schools=shitty future for us all. I mean, what would happen if we entrusted our precious country to some barely-educated ignoramus who just fucked things up and made us look like a bunch of assholes to the rest of the world?

(I'm not making this brief am I?)

Okay, okay, here's what we are thinking: we could stay in San Francisco and take our chances with the schools, and Bunny, because she is our daughter, will most likely be fine.

Or, we could move outside of the city, to a place with good schools, but we'd be giving up everything we love so much about city living. (And J. would have to commute.) We are not 'burb people (though, arguably we just spent 16 months living in 'burby Portland), but should we make that sacrifice for our kids?

What would you do?

(And, I would just like to say a big "fuck you" to the San Francisco school lottery system. I bet more families would stay here if this wasn't an issue.)

GIRL ON A PORCH SWING

Today J. half-jokingly told me that Bunny must really miss Portland since she's now talking about missing people she barely knew. People she didn't interact with all that much.

She saw a house similar to ours on a TV program and she asked J. if that was our house in Portland.

J. replied, "It looks like it," and then he gave me a wry smile and said, "Lump in throat. Hope we made the right decision. Says thought bubble above head..."

We've been completely open and honest about our move with Bunny. She knows what we know: Papa has a new job that moved us from Portland to San Francisco, the city where she was born.  We're living in this house until we can move the rest our things and her toys here. Her friends and our friends are still in Portland. We will visit them and they will visit us. 

Overall, Bunny's doing fine. She's still got her sass about her. Her gray-blue eyes have their sparkle. She's quick to smile. I continue to be amazed by her resiliency.

A three-year-old is allowed to miss the only place she can remember being her home. I'm not going to stop her from sharing her feelings or tell her that they aren't real. I'm not going to tell her she'll feel better soon or that eventually she'll miss Portland less.

She can continue to tell us what and who she misses.  We'll continue to validate her feelings and to comfort her.

And each other.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, DOG

I don't know if anyone remembers last year when my mom's Qi Gong Master prescribed his feng shui tips for the year (the Chinese lunar calendar), but here are this year's tips:

• the chimes (low-toned, which means they will be BIG) move west
• put something red in the center of your house

Normally we spend the Chinese New Year with family. We go out to eat in a Chinese or Korean restaurant.  I'm not sure if we will do that this year.  Maybe tomorrow morning we will walk up to Clement Street and pick up some dim sum from Wing Lee Bakery and then bring it home.

Chinese New Year is also a time when people do a little spring cleaning and adorn their house with forced plum blossom branches and piles of tangerines and pass out red envelopes full of lucky money. I've been seeing (mostly) Chinese women carrying these newspaper-wrapped branches home all week. The plum tree outside our kitchen window is in full bloom. When I am writing I can look out the window and see the delicate pink flowers fluttering in the breeze. They are so beautiful.

We are doing some house adjusting of our own trying to get more comfortable here.

Today we went to IKEA and bought a new bed. J. and I have been sleeping on a full-size bed, and since Bunny sleeps with us most nights, none of us have been getting much sleep. It's too small, and I don't like to have anyone touching me when I sleep.

We've decided not to have the girls share a room (Bunny doesn't sleep in there anyway). She will get what is now our bedroom, and we will move downstairs into the dining room. The girls had their own rooms in Portland and they are used to sleeping alone. Plus they wake each up too damn early in the AM when they sleep together. Wallie would sleep until 9:00AM if we let her, but Bunny is often up at the crack of dawn. Separating them is better for everyone.

And for us, sleeping in the dining room will actually be great because the dining room is one of those multi-purpose, Victorian rooms that can be completely closed off from the rest of the house. Bed is delivered Monday morning so in less than 48 hours, I look forward to finally getting a good night's sleep.

We also got a new sofabed thingy because J. can't get comfy on the sofa that came with the house. J. doesn't choose sofas for their looks.  He tests them by lying down and closing his eyes and seeing if he can fall asleep on it. We will never own anything from Ligne Roset, guaranteed. Current sofa is very dainty and velvety. J. is too tall to fully stretch out on it, and since I'm usually always parked on it, he has no where to sit.

J. was right.  It was much easier to just sell our stuff and get some "new" furniture instead of spending money on moving our furniture and then paying for it to be stored (since this house is furnished).  So Pretty Lady sofa will live next to Swedish Manly sofa (aka Sven). We can always use Sven in the next place we move if we can actually find someplace where we can have a TV room or playroom. We must.  I need to get out from under this pile of toys.  I so miss our basement...

So this Chinese New Year, we are seeking more comfort and relaxation. And uninterupted sleep for all.

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year!

WE'VE ARRIVED IN SAN FRANCISCO

Happy Holidays from the CityFam in San Francisco. (photo and design courtesy Krista Baugham/Seattle) We loaded up the rented minivan (sweet), stopped off at Mamaloo's house to say bye to friends (sniff!!!) and then began our trek down I-5. The weather cooperated all the way to southern Oregon where my brother lives and we arrived in time for Christmas surf and turf-fest of stone crab and grilled filet mignon.

J. took Bunny out for a walk to look at Christmas lights* with the cousins and Wallie and I passed out (me with the help of some Nyquil). The cold that I have been fighting off all week finally reared its ugly head this weekend.

This morning we woke up and the kids tore into presents while the adults sat around and drank coffee and watched. J. felt a touch sad because Bunny didn't have as many presents to open as her cousins did. (It was not an extravagant Christmas by any means. My brother likes to keep things pretty low key as well.) I didn't think anything of it and Bunny didn't seem to notice, but J. said that Bunny seemed "mopey" and not her usual self.

On the drive down to SF he said that he wanted to take Bunny and Wallie to a toy store and buy them anything they wanted...I talked him down. For me, the material part of the holidays are truly not as important as spending time together. It was fun to watch Bunny's face as she opened her ballet shoes and as she watched Wallie open her rubber ducky (two things she asked Santa for). She would not have been happier with 5, 10, or 20 more gifts. I understand where J.'s feelings are coming from, I really do. But the presents thing is a slippery slope that I'd rather not navigate right now. And that's just part of why I like to spend the holidays on our own, or at least Christmas morning, anyway.

After breakfast we got back into the van and continued on down to San Francisco. Once we hit the California border it rained the whole way down I-5. That seemed fitting. But as we got closer to the city, I felt myself relax a bit. It's nice to see Spanish names on road signs and it's comforting to be in a place where I know where all the freeways go. And nothing can ever replace that first glimpse of San Francisco that you get as you leave Treasure Island crossing the Bay Bridge. ...so beautiful it takes your breath away.

Midway through the trip we realized that Wallie had pinkeye, but she was a trooper despite the green crusty goop. We ate our Christmas lunch at Denny's Diner in Redding, Calif. where we had to wait 30 minutes for a table because it was packed. Doesn't anyone stay home for Christmas lunch anymore? We didn't go anywhere on Christmas when I was a kid, but this Denny's was bursting at the seams. The girls had mac n' cheese and grapes and I shared a chocolate milkshake with Wallie Pop because I was too wound up to eat. We arrived in San Francisco in time for dinner.  J. stocked the fridge before he left for Portland so I made us some pasta, the girls has a bath, and now I am sitting in a quiet house, all warm and good-vibey (more on that later) which is new to me, getting used to the sounds.

We together, we're safe, we're relatively healthy. And we're never moving on Christmas day again.

*My brother lives on a street where people are known for their decorations and people drive up and down it to look at the lights. Did you know that "HE is the reason for the season?" My brother and his family do because their crazy Flanders-esque neighbor erected a billboard-sized sign with those words on it, and mounted it on their roof, complete with ultra-bright spotlights.

I LEFT MY HEART IN PORTLAND, OREGON

The move is on. I won't be posting for a couple of days while we navigate the 600 or so miles down the I-5 from Portland to San Francisco. I've never not felt excited about moving so this is a new emotion for me. It's mixed, but I am definitely more sad than happy.

Portland, I will miss you. 

I'm sorry that I never made it to the coast or to the gorge or to the Saturday market.

I will miss the friendliness of the people, the funky colors of the houses, and the beautiful greenness everywhere you look.

I will miss dogwoods, and roses, and moss.

I will miss that even though people in New York, San Francisco, and LA think they're all that, it's only because they haven't been here to see what indivuality and an unconscious sense of self really is all about. People in Portland kick ass, and they know it, but they don't need to talk about it. (Like I just did.)

I will miss the fact that this is the greatest bar town in the country. In Portland, the creativity of its citizens are best reflected in its cocktails. I will miss going into a bar and asking for the "bar menu" and seeing drinks that make your mind explode like at Mint where you can get an avocado daiquiri made with rum, fresh avocado, lemon and lime juices (fresh squeezed, 'course), and sugar. Or a "Absolut Mission" made with fresh fig puree, vodka, and ruby port.

Or at Lovely Hula Hands (a restaurant named after a song I grew up singing) where they serve "Pink Pears," a luscious concoction made with Clear Creek pear brandy, fresh lime, sugar, and Chambord. Or cold milk punch: Bushmill's, 2 sugar cubes, fresh nutmeg, and cold milk.

I will miss living in a town where Pimm's Cups are available everywhere and whisky sours are only ever made with citrus squeezed to order.

So I leave you (for a few days) and Portland (for who knows how long?) with visions of cocktails to celebrate the season.

Happy holidays from my family to yours! See you at the end of this latest journey...

OPERATING ON ONE HOUR OF SLEEP

Wallie is a teething mess. Yesterday she took a bite of polenta and burst into tears. It was too much for the gums. She was up all night long pissed and punky. And I think I gave her too much Tylenol because she couldn't stop attempting somersaults and head-spins in the bed. Or maybe it was all those teething tablets. I guess she is one of those kids that gets hyped up on meds. So glad I discovered that at 3:23AM.

But now she's fine. She hasn't stopped quacking—"quack, quack, quack"—since she woke up, so I think her toofs are better.

This morning I'm running on double-strength coffee, Midol, and cold pizza. And I only burst into tears on the phone with J. once! At his new job, he sits in a cube. He was doing his best to console me without letting on to his co-workers that his wife is losing her marbles. ("Uh huh, yes, Uh huh, yes.") I know it is probably selfish of me to call him at work hysterical, but the dude is in San Francisco and I am here. Honestly? He has no idea what needs to get done around here before we can move.

My house is a wreck. It's raining canines and felines. We're nowhere near done packing. My child thinks she's a duck. Yeah. I'm doing just great.

THIS OLD HOUSE

We're about to turn our house over to people we don't know. They couldn't be nicer (and we have weird, strange things in common), but it still makes me sad.

I'm not worried about them not taking good care of our house and our things. That's a non-issue. Houses are meant to be lived in. Their sweet little girls feel comfortable tromping up and down the stairs here and that makes me happy. Their mama is a Libra (like me), and is just one of those people you feel immediately comfortable with.  With her, it's like you want to just open a bottle of wine and share stories all night long.

I'm not worried that our house won't be loved. It will. It's just that this is the first place we've ever lived that really felt like home. Bunny learned how to ride a tricycle here. Wallie took her first steps here. And I can't believe it, but we are leaving. And it hurts.