Cirque

It's 9:40 a.m. on a particular Friday in January, and it's not summertime, and the livin' isn't easy. The living are, in fact, uneasy. Marlou's next PET scan looms, hanging heavy over our days. Nevermind, for I am re-syncing my iPod. No one knows how iPods get out of sync, but when you're 61 years old and out of it and long out of the habit of reading half the screen warnings that link iPod and iTunes and I Claudius is muttering in the background, "trust no one" -- well, you can find yourself frantically trying to get all those podcasts back in your little plastic player which is the size of two books of matches, if there still are books of matches, what with the decline of cigarettes and fireplaces. By the time you've finally read your current podcast setting and finally re-sync successfully, dammit, your sister is practically at the local train station.

It's a seven-minute overland journey under battery power from home to the northbound platform. But having left four minutes late, by the time I get there my sister has gone. I find her waiting by the old station building across the tracks. She is standing with her dancer's erect posture, rolling suitcase in tow, looking like an elegant refugee...a quality born of various displacements and life experience...which I may be projecting...but, no, this is some strange part of our family legacy. Which adds up to a certain shyness about hugging each other. And because life seems more temporary and fragile than ever, I am into hugging. No holds barred. The real, shoulder-crushing, genuine article. Though on this occasion, we give each other a gentle pat.

We catch up over coffee. My sister and I have been talking to each other across tables for a long time. In one decade, it was the Noe Valley Bar and Grill and the Meat Market Coffee Shop in San Francisco, followed by the Prolific Oven in Palo Alto...and now this somewhat anonymous café by the train station. Fond as we are of each other, we also have something of the quality of strangers. We didn't grow up together, after all, and we've been trying to get to know each other ever since.

So there is an air of discovery about fairly routine experiences. Such as the next day during intermission at Cirque du Soleil. I've bought tickets at the last moment, relatively speaking, and our seats aren't together. Susie and I are sitting in the front row, close enough to the stage for me to rest my edematous right paralyzed foot on its edge. Marlou has disappeared up an aisle to some other seat. With the matinee half over, we all find each other in the twilight of porta-potties and popcorn and compare notes on the amazing high wire act with the trio balancing 30 feet above us on a bicycle. Marlou hasn't seen it. She is sitting behind a post. Well, Marlou is about to tell me, it's Susie's first time here, and at least she gets to see it....

Which, I decide, is neither here nor there, and it's great that the three of us are flying into concerted action. We are headed for the box office. I am building up an irate head of steam, out of my way, you silly people milling for souvenirs and hot dogs. Marlou tells me to turn on my headlight, and uncharacteristically I don't even protest. The lamp is bright enough to part crowds with its glaring cyclops beam, and that's what's happening now. A staffer can't resist hustling us out of the far entrance, muttering about fire regulations while we pause to get our tickets stamped for a brief exit. Never mind, even he can't faze us. By the time I get to the box office, nothing can stop me. Flanked by Marlou and Susie I tell the girl inside that, in essence, don't give me any of your $80-a-ticket-Québécoise crap, because my wife is seated behind something opaque, and don't give me any crap about how your computer says it's not there, because I'm going from pillar to post on this one, Françoise, or whatever your name is. A 30% refund? That's what this silly girl is doing with my credit card, now? Never mind. It's a start.

The intermission is winding down, but I am winding up. Back through the crowds, ramming into, or close to, hapless pedestrians, headlight blazing. Marlou assures me that it's all okay, what the heck. Which is what I'm thinking, what the heck, as I collar an usher. My wife can't see, I tell her. She tells me the place is sold out. I tell her we've just been to the box office, and people are working on this problem, powerful people who work inside a heated trailer and sell tickets so that the rest of you can tear them and point up an aisle...or juggle bowling pins...or ride a unicycle while performing a pas de deux from Swan Lake. The usher finds a cohort, and while they whisper, I yell my discovery. There's room for an extra folding chair...wheelchair spaces being what they are, big enough to accommodate various models of wheels and axles. The ushers eyeball the situation. What the heck. The chair appears, and Susie disappears up the aisle, and moments later there's Marlou...just as the lights are going down. And now the three of us, seated side by side, can watch two of Wotan's netherworld assistants perform demented, suicidal acrobatics on this big spinning set of Ferris wheels. We did it.

Riding the train home from San Francisco, blasted full of Chianti and oso buco, I feel relieved that the day hasn't fallen apart...the circus tickets were there at will call, the restaurant had our reservation, the Peninsula still has a train. Riding in the wheelchair space, leg propped against the bulkhead, I watch the stations drift by. South San Francisco. San Bruno. Millbrae. I've been riding this train for years. The very constancy of it, the warmth in the heated car on a cold night, the reassuring fluorescence of the lights...all this allows me to drift...into a place that is pained and turbulent and constantly in the background. It is my life's screensaver. There's no avoiding it, although most of the time I try. It's a disturbing hour-long ride home. But it's what I need. That night, my sleep is sound and long.

Susie is heading home the next day. We have a ritual morning coffee at a local supermarket...upscale and upstairs. She asks me to tell her what I need, pointing out my tendency toward stoicism. I tell her. First, soup. Next, plants. There follows a dizzying round of shopping at the farmers market, driving to the suburban nursery...Cuisinart grinding, soup bubbling...lettuce and broccoli and spinach six-packs juggled in the air with a deftness that rivals anything at Cirque du Soleil...especially when one adds the two 40-pound bags of steer manure...and something about all this seems urgent and essential. We need to get things on the ground. The rains are coming. We can see it in the turbulent air. Clouds are massing. They drench and pound...and they also bring life. This is the strange reality of these days. Forces threaten and nourish, and it's hard to say what's happening...but we're trying to get rooted and face the rain.