If there is an opposite to déjà vu, then that’s what’s happening to me now, every day.
My morning begins when Dennis, my helper, departs. His leaving means that the day’s essential neuromuscular bases have been covered. I have ridden the exercycle. I have walked, leaning on Dennis, back and forth on the terrace five times. I have reclined upon the treatment table so Dennis can stretch my limbs. Then I have stood in a special frame for half an hour, while I do a few breathing exercises, stare at my computer screen, and long for freedom.
So the latter, when it comes, forces my hand. Will I stay at home and have coffee and a 10:30 AM breakfast upstairs? Or will I venture out down the hill into the neighborhood to have more or less the same at Cup? Or, as I decided this morning, is it time to venture further afield? Yes, it is time. And while I have a final pee before hitting the transit road, I ask Dennis for a little info. Seems the #36 bus is imminent. So I rush out the door, hoping to grab it. And sure enough, here it comes, laboring up the hill only to wait while my wheelchair labors up its ramp.
Then onward and down, down into the Mission District, supposedly in search of breakfast. But actually in quest. And everything has the tinge of a first-time experience. I am half surprised to find that 30th St. still runs at the bottom of the hill. It has been waiting there for as long as I have lived in my current San Francisco house. But, OK, it is somewhat true that in this COVID-19 era I have been stuck at home. This bus line only began running a few weeks ago, after more than a year of suspension. Now it is back and I am back and the Mission District is back too.
I am here, and Walgreens is here, and I remember one thing I really do need to buy. I emerge from the retail experience with lens cleaners. Let there be light. And then, well I know what mystery awaits me. It is the nature of the restaurant that replaced Mission Pies. In fairness, they collapsed before the pandemic. And the death of this restaurant that served everything from chicken pot pies to blueberry pies, not to mention a few soups and salads, cappuccinos and so on, well, it was a graceful death. The owners simply announced that in San Francisco the combination of rent, paying staff a decent wage, and providing things like health insurance, proved to be too much. They threw in the capitalist towel.
All to be replaced by something very Middle Eastern. Halal, in fact. I cruise by the place, look in the front door, and everything is empty in the table area. So I roll my wheelchair around to the side and find a couple of windows through which customers are to order, pandemic-style. To the proprietors’ credit, one of these windows is at wheelchair height. Of course, they have no menus. I have somehow learned how to read the menu code with my mobile phone. But for me, this is a strained exercise. First, it is something new. Second it requires the one-handed extraction of my phone. So I’m glad when the woman just sticks a paper menu through the window. All sorts of good Middle Eastern stuff. And beside the window, in the best San Francisco tradition, a poster urging the restoration of Arab studies somewhere.
I almost consider eating here in the sidewalk structure the restaurant has erected. But I’ve got something else in mind. A little cash from the Bank of the West ATM, followed by a tense moment trying to stuff the money in my bag. Somehow everything feels that it should be easier. And it once was. Never mind. Onward to the Beloved Café. Known affectionately as the….
It’s a wonderful vegetarian experience. Dal soup being my choice for brunch. And here something miraculous happens. A woman visiting from Eugene, Oregon, talks to me. Of this and of that, and I really don’t care. I am out of the house and being social. Jane is lovely, but she does have a full-time job, and even if she didn’t, I need to be reminded of an outside world. The woman also helps me get my wheelchair pedals folded up, so I can get under the metal table. Then when it’s time to depart, she reverses the maneuver. And I head for the final leg of my adventure: BART.
How infuriating that the elevator down to the trains isn’t working. It also isn’t described as not working. There’s no sign saying something along the lines of “broken” or “out of service.” There’s no sign of anything, particularly the elevator. So, I look at my bus app on the phone, calculate possibilities, and roll across the street to the La Bohème Café. The place has been there forever. The Middle Eastern owners have been there almost as long. And one of the latter serves me a mocha, an unprecedented choice, but this is an unprecedented day. It turns out to be a little larger than I had expected. Not to mention a little hotter, despite the insulating sleeve. And I spend an exciting 10 neuromuscular minutes slowly rolling back to where the #36 bus stops and where this adventure began.