Aftermath

I really don't know what to do about the friendly phone call from the volunteer at Jewish Family Services...who wants to drop off a holiday gift pack.  Fortunately, my answering machine saved us both some embarrassment.  And I now have a useful record, a sonic archive, of the proposed visit.  'It contains some food items,' the man said, as though this news would push me over the edge in holiday pack enthusiasm.  Food items.  Who needs more food items at Rosh Hashanah?  Am I supposed to gaze fondly at these things while I fast for Yom Kippur?  Whatever. 

As a Jewish Family Services client in a wheelchair, I must fit all the earmarks for Person in Need.  I don't believe anyone has ever dropped off a gift pack for me, personally, ever in my life, including the Menlo Park Welcome Wagon, if there ever was one.  Remember those things?  A suburban Chamber of Commerce would welcome you into the retail fold with an enticing wicker basket full of long-shelflife goodies and coupons.  Perhaps this practice long ago died a mercantile death, and there's no reason why the Jews pick should up on it. 

But they're not.  Community being such a weak commodity in America, our efforts to reach out to each other naturally founder.  That's why I don't know what to do but call the guy back and play this thing out.  If I ignore him and his good intentions, well, that seems rude.  If I suggest that I get out of my house as much, if not more, than he does...well, what's the point?  Okay, I'm not ready to be on the list of Elderly Jewish Shut-Ins who want, need or otherwise appreciate gift baskets.  But why not let the guy come in and talk to me?  Can there be too much generosity?  Who really gets harmed?  What is there to do but be gracious, thank the man for his efforts and, who knows, we might just hit it off?  Become coffee buddies.  One never knows.

Besides, Jewish Family Services has done an excellent job of grief maintenance and backup.  Two social workers, one nurse, a volunteer and a rabbi have been on the job over the last six months.  And the rabbi is still on the job, meeting the only this morning to talk about Yom Kippur.  That's because I have to speak on, and about, Yom Kippur....  The third time I've given a drash, a sort of sermon, on the high holidays.  And this time, somehow I've run out of ideas or energy.  Or so it seemed.

The rabbi and I have a way of meeting at a coffee bar across from the San Francisco railway station.  And after an hour's discussion in the September sun, there was no shortage of material.  In fact, there was too much.

This matter of 'how grief is much like fear' puzzled C. S. Lewis, and it always baffled me...but not now.  Rolling out of the cappuccino joint, having said goodbye to the rabbi, in search of the Caltrain station's toilet, I had a certain handle on the anxiety.  The generalized dread, the sense that bad things are coming.  Which as Lewis describes it is 'like' fear, but not precisely the same.  So, I had a certain handle on the feeling...and the feeling had a grip on me.

Errands.  I had errands to do.  What precisely?  Well, certain objectives and preoccupations that can only spring from the soil of retirement.  While I would not describe these as aimless, the objectives were nattering among themselves in a most unpleasant way.  And the general consensus was that this guy is nonproductive and undirected and must be watched. 

I could sense something was wrong while waiting for the tram.  Electronic signs announce the comings and goings of the light rail line from Market Street.  But somehow I was waiting in the middle of King Street, instead of Fourth Street, having gotten the two confused...and damned if the next tram didn't slip right by.  I am not like this.  But the rabbi and I had gotten into the Land of Death, and I was still on the outskirts.

In between tram updates, the electronic sign board was perking along with general observations on the state of transit health.  Which was looking pretty bad.  There was no elevator working at Montgomery Street.  The elevator was also broken at Civic Center.  Which in disabled access terms, puts 40% of the tram stops in central San Francisco out of action.  I found this utterly galling.  I also found it hardly surprising.  California is in a state of budgetary apocalypse, the no-tax crowd determined to go down with the sinking ship.  And what can sink faster than a lead-acid-battery-powered wheelchair?

Worse, I had forgotten my disabled tube ticket.  The BART subway system is entirely separate from the trams and requires its own fare.  So at Embarcadero Station I got off the tram, went upstairs to buy a tube ticket, got back on the tram and got off at the next stop.  Which wasn't the right stop, but one station too early.  And since the central San Francisco tram stops number six in total, it's hard to get confused...unless one is confused.  Or very preoccupied.  Death daze.

So, back on the tram and off at Powell Street for my first objective, the Geary Theatre box office.  About which I had certain misgivings.  I don't rush out to experience Noel Coward any more than I wear spats.  But, okay, the production had boomed along in London for some time, and what the hell.  I'm just not in the mood to miss anything.  Naturally, I popped for the Wednesday matinee.  Good weekday train schedule.  Weekdays being eminently free.  And, when one considers the 20 people milling about the sidewalk in front of the not-yet-open box office, well, I was hardly alone. 

Americans don't know how to queue, of course, or so when the doors finally opened, what was there to do but let the cripple go more or less first?  For which I was enormously grateful.  The play was essentially sold out, but I got something.  A little high in the theater architecture, but maybe the Geary provides oxygen.  The only problem involved the price.  Wheelchair seats come with a discount...if they are sold, which sometimes they aren't.  Meaning that the non-wheelchair price still resided in the computer, the box office manager was nowhere to be seen, so the ticket guy decided that a 50% discount would be just the thing.  Slightly justifying my aimless wanderings about town, time being money.  How much time I have and how much money I could be earning present such imponderables that my bouncing around San Francisco's Tenderloin began to drift from the distracted to the dreamy.

Right down Taylor Street, which is something of a major Schizophrenic Highway.  But in broad daylight in the middle of a warm late summer day...ah, no big deal.  The curb ramps are too steep.  One constituent did tell me that I was next and should follow that one.  But these are small potatoes hallucination-wise, and I rolled into the Golden Gate Theatre unharmed.  Did I really want to see 'South Pacific?'  Hard to say.  I just didn't want to miss it.  Yes, the silly thing was also approaching sellout.  The last row of the orchestra for me, but also a steal. 

There was this thin veneer of time-equals-money practicality settling over things.  And now back to Caltrain...but maybe not.  Debating the next move, I looked up to witness a major dose of urban and social collapse.  Not that one can really tell the difference.  Vast stretches of Market Street, San Francisco's mercantile heart, historic thoroughfare, the place where the earthquake fire stopped ...well, the shops are shuttered, the businesses are gone and there's nothing but an empty feeling.  Even the panhandlers avoid it. 

I like the guys at the Punjab Restaurant.  I really like them.  The moment I roll in, they practically knock half the diners out of place to make room for my wheelchair.  Put a little sag chicken tikka in the stomach and take a little sag out of the spirit.  And I knew this thread would be sagging for a long time.  I don't like the word grief.  It just doesn't do the experience justice.  Aftermath will do.  And this may be the first epoque in my life in which confusion, uncertainty, low productivity and purposelessness converge -- without too much self-incrimination.  I knew that one of the afternoon departures of cash-strapped Caltrain had been deleted from the schedule.  I would have to wait, and the trip home would be a long one.  And somehow, all this was okay.