Westward Home

Dunking hunks of challah into Saul’s Chicken-In-A-Pot soup and browsing for used books at Pendragon’s. Drinking tea at the Ferry Building. Coffee at Martha’s on 24th street. Movies at the deco theater in Orinda. Walking the succulent and cacti lined paths of the Ruth Bancroft Garden. Talking politics without being a stranger in a strange land. Sitting on Muir Beach. Finding a recycle bin whenever I need to toss my water bottle. The way my pharmacist greets me by name. Ladies night at the Kabuki Springs and Spa. Memories of my then three-year-old Sam yelling, “my city, my city” as we crest the top of Diamond Heights on the way to visiting our aunt. My sustenance.

Listlessly at first and then with more vigor, I sought out duplicate sources for my subsistence. After some sloppage and some well-mounded choices, I finally assembled a small plate of soul food, sprinkled with crispy repartee and slathered in friendly gentility. Filling yet not quite satisfying. It wasn’t what I left. Desperate to trade away opportunity for reinvention I wanted my life back, my old life. True, it was riddled with money stress, faulty pressure valves, and starved for blood, but what was the use of a mind at ease at the cost of a sore heart?

Here three months tomorrow, in celebration we head to a nearby bowling alley and spaghetti restaurant. Milo isn’t hungry and wants to go directly to the lanes, the rest of us be damned. I explain that three out of four people in the car are hungry—that trumps one demanding Moochie. He quiets down and acquiesces with the proviso that he will only eat dessert. It’s 7:30 p.m. It’s Friday. We all need some goofy fun. I don’t really care.

Sam (soothing Milo): “Mooch, we’re just hungry and you’re not. It’s not like Mom is against you or I am against you or Dad is against you. We’re all against you.”

We arrive at the restaurant and enter a smallish saloon, a mix of post-industrial Detroit set in Ma Barker’s living room. The hostess leads us to our table in a more expansive version of the welcome-n-wait area, which also houses a vintage San Francisco trolley car. We all stare at each other, take in the signs for Coit Tower and Church Street. She sits us in the trolley car. We glance at the menu and order. Plates of heaping carbs and one face-sized brownie sundae soon cover the paper mats. In no time, we’re gut-loaded and ready to bowl.