Early Enough

I knew something was wrong leaving the train station.  There was no particular hurry about getting to the dentist for my teeth cleaning, yet there I was, ignoring the crossing's electronic advisory, the seconds counting down from one down to zero.  And despite the neon red 0, I found myself perilously in the pavement, dodging the turning traffic and, yes, getting yelled at by a driver.  I could feel it even in the center of the boulevard, where the trams slide in and out.  Something in me was desperate.  I rolled my wheelchair a few inches toward the other tram stop across the street, then back, then rolled up the platform to look at the sign, then down.  Then up again because a tram had arrived.  Then on board.  "Sir, shall I fold down the seat?"  Yes, I told the driver, that would be a good idea.  I needed my own wheelchair space, a stainless-steel corral.  For if the tram's jerkings did not threaten me, my own did.

There's a lot my brother and I do not like to recall about our childhood, but one apparently minor detail made a lasting impression on both of us.  It was our mother's driving.  Not so much her conduct on the road, but her accelerator footwork.  She could not drive around the bucolic roads of our desert town, 25 mph posted virtually everywhere, at an even mechanical tempo.  She jerked the accelerator pedal, up and down, pushing, releasing.  Gas, then no gas.  Her foot was always moving, even when the car was barely creeping.  Forward motion had no continuity for her, no gentle increases or decreases of speed.  In the 1950s, the era I recall, she probably hit the accelerator pedal 10 times each time she pulled out of a parking space.

Which brings me back to San Francisco and my compulsive maneuverings from train to tram.  Something in me was, or felt, as discontinuous as my mother's soul.  Anger, fear, all the suspect emotions could be rounded up, right there on the spot.  Rounded up, branded and herded, although it would take a long time.  That was the thing.  Lots of emotions, lots of stuff bubbling, and a good thing to be journeying on the San Francisco Municipal Railway rather than the crumbling freeways.  Here, aboard the tram, I could do my own crumbling.

I understand as an adult that my mother's emotional absence was not about me.  It's those non-adult moments that still give me trouble.  I have to remind myself that Marlou's chemotherapy, wherein much of the American pharmaceutical industry enters our home and settles in for a long, uninvited stay...that this is not about me either.  It's about time it ended, that's for sure.  But there's no end in sight.  And there are times when this hits me, hits me hard, and makes me not care quite enough if a car hits me too.  One of life's most distressing secrets.  People who are raised without compassion can be dangerous -- to themselves.

They can certainly be confused.  Even the most straightforward of things like the Jewish Community Federation's announcement of a literary evening with a local novelist, a wonderful one, and a former teacher of mine.  Good thing I decided to get the early train the very next day after my trip to the dentist.  That's a lot of San Francisco trains in 36 hours, but what the hell.  Showing up is 90% of life, according to Woody Allen, and since I'm too addled to do anything but show, there I was, on the Menlo Park platform showing up for, at least, the train.

Pounding up the Peninsula, the Cow Palace fading into the late afternoon sun, then the tunnels, and the familiar station.  The Giants baseball park was already aswarm with people, guards on the sidewalks, even an extra Muni transit guy overseeing the streetcars.  I saw this from the window of mine.  A Streetcar Named Ocean Park.  At Embarcadero Station I rolled into the elevator and rolled out into the early evening.  Being early I had a quick look at the makeover of Steuart Street.  The makeover occurred a decade ago, but I'm always the last to know.  Small hotels, expensive restaurants.  Tucked just out of sight of the waterfront.  Nothing tucked about the Jewish Community Federation.  It made its brick and glass presence known, ample and solid and funded.

Hitting the wheelchair access knob did nothing.  Trying to turn the door handle did everything.  Lights burst on, and a guard burst out.  Could he help me?  Just inside the door, the place looked a little less like San Francisco and a little more like the first-class security kiosk at Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv.  A shorthaired shtarker sat in a glass booth eyeing me with the simultaneous disdain and appraisal of either an authentic Israeli or a good imitation.  The guard looked over my invitation.  Actually, part of an e-mail.  Which turned out to be the wrong part.  The Jewish Federation was sponsoring the thing, not housing it.  The event was miles across town.

But the train station wasn't.  It was straight back down the streetcar line, the run along the Embarcadero, where the tankers were coming and going, the freighters heaving and hoing.  The streetcar was jammed with baseball attendees.  My wheelchair could barely fit.  Never mind.  I live my life much like my mother's accelerator action.  A certain amount of discontinuity, obsessive activity, anxiously wasted motion.  And this evening was part of all that.  I wondered if I really liked travel or just the sense of motion.  I decided on neither.  I was sitting in the very front of the streetcar, looking straight ahead, past the driver, right through his windshield.  Directly above us, two miles away, the sunset was still glowing atop Twin Peaks.  Here in the flatlands it was already dusk.  This all seemed inexplicable, the hills shining with promise, darkness gathering below.  Travel, even anxious travel, stirs the restless soul with activity, just enough, the way a cradle rocks just enough.  And if you get into it, especially if you arrive at sunset, you'll see the world re-presenting itself, gathering the ingredients of another miraculous day.