So where were we? I'd created these pseudonyms for
my friends just in case someone has a sense of privacy stronger than mine:
Betsy,
Jana
Sarah
Lana,
Nicki
and me, Tina (whose sense of privacy does not feel
invaded by what I'm writing here.)
I think
I left off on Tuesday evening the day I suggested to Jana that we
include Nicki in our walk if all of us could make it on Thursday. We
couldn't, I thought, include Sarah, unfortunately, because even if she'd come
back from Spain, she had indicated that she'd need time to catch her
breath. Lana probably couldn’t make it because of a house-related
appointment she had that day, but Betsy, Jana, and Nicki and I were on.
I'd thought we'd walk at the Embarcadero, and I'd arrive there by streetcar,
but as we exchanged e-mails other possibilities were suggested: Jana
planned on driving--but to what destination, considering that she was limited
to 2 hours at the Embarcadero--and she was offering a ride to the rest of
us. Betsy would be taking the ferry over if we were meeting at the
Embarcadero, but she also offered to cook for and host us in her town north of
Golden Gate Bridge. I was missing some of these exchanges--or getting
them late--because I was deleting my e-mail to get it down from 13 gigabytes,
which meant I had it arranged by size, not time received. I also lost my
credit card, but the size of my e-mail Outlook was of much greater a concern to
me.
I think
by this time, Sarah had let us know she was back, so we'd invited her, another
birthday babe, to join us. She had suggested the Arrow as a meeting
place.
http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Take-a-bow-Sculptors-Oldenburg-and-van-Bruggen-2709280.php
Betsy
had suggested Peet's Coffee at the Embarcadero as a meeting Place.
I was
about to make another suggestion, based on the article on Thursday morning--but
now I'm getting ahead.
I hadn't
seen Jana's suggestion that we go to the Plant for lunch. In fact, I
hadn't thought about where we were going to eat at all.
Wednesday
morning was when Betsy and I got the good news that Sarah, back from Spain,
could join us. We shared this with Jana. Most of the time Nicki,
having trouble with her Reply button, had been mostly out of the discussion, so
we wound up with two meeting times--10 as Betsy suggested and 12 as Nicki
suggested, adding that she had to leave town Thursday evening.
By this
time, I'd also passed on to Jana the offer Betsy had made to host us north of Golden
Gate Bridge and lead us on a walk there. I'd waited because I wanted
Betsy to find out Nicki's preference, but Nicki was having trouble responding,
so we could no longer wait for her to state her preference.
Jana
liked the idea of crossing Golden Gate Bridge, but by the time she knew about
it, Betsy no longer thought it was an option. But she did extend an
invitation for Friday.
So...we
pick up on Wednesday morning, when I was trying to track down my missing credit
card. It's 8:57 AM, and I've just responded to Betsy's offer to host us--once
she's cleared it with Nicki.
Jana had
a lot of family things to attend to, so I wanted to help her out by arranging
things with Sarah and Nicki. However, because I was trying not to bother
her, Jana didn't know I was trying to arrange things, so she was arranging them
too. She had suggested For Mason and Greens.
At 5:55
PM on Wednesday night, I appealed to the heroic, asking that someone make a
decision, and it would be nice to have the input of our birthday babes.
(I use the word babes for alliteration and certainly with complete respect for
these friends, who are intelligent women belonging to a birthday group I dubbed
"Beautiful Birthday Babe" in our "Beautiful Birthday Babe
Bunch.") I implored, "We need a dictator. Who will the
heroine be? Or should we just take some heroin?"
Betsy,
doing a play on words with drugs, said, "Tina, you crack me
up." She wanted Nicki and Sarah to decide and let us know.
At 6:29
PM, Sarah valiantly entered our e-world with her offer: "I
will be the decision maker! I love the Embarcadero and taking BART there
would be perfect for me and easy for Betsy to get to on the ferry. Let's
compromise and meet at 11 am at the bow and arrow structure! After that,
I humbly resign and leave the rest of the planning to you all. Does this
sound good? Any dissent?
After
she'd spent the evening with family matters, Jana sent a message saying,
"That's fine with me." She also said she was driving and
invited others to go along. She would park on Delancey Street at the end
of Brannan, where she could park for two hours.
Sarah
responded at 11:33 PM , offering her handicapped placard, which had no time
limit. She would meet Jana at Jana's place at 10:30 on Thursday morning.
Then
Nicki got through to us, asking where we'd have lunch. She wouldn't be
joining us on our walk but would come for lunch. She also suggested that
Jana get an app for "Let me know where you are every moment" or just
send a hit of heroin. She added, "Got that, NSA?"
Jana
replied at 11:34 that Nicki could be at her house at 10:30 or so. "I
didn’t think we decided where to eat. I'll call the Plant tomorrow to see
if we'll need reservations...about 11:30? We'll park in a garage."
But
I missed those messages, so the next morning at 9:16 AM, I sent my own
contradictory message:
"With
all our efforts at figuring out where we were going, we neglected where we're
eating I just looked at the Slanted Door and see they might have openings
at 11:00 and 11;30 and 2:00 but not at q2w:00 or 2:30, which I first logged
in."
Notice
how my message reveals complete unawareness of the proposed plan to eat at the
Plant at Pier 3!
After
seeing the OTHER (one of the other?) plans, I sent a PS:
"Oh,
I'm sorry! I didn't see this because my e-mail was organized according to
size! Please ignore my message."
That was at 9:21 AM on Thursday. At 9:48 Nicki sent
a message, "I'll meet you at the Plant at 12:00."
Jana replied at 9:50:
Jana replied at 9:50:
"Okay. I was about to call them to make reservations
for 11:30. I'll make them for 12. Nicki, do you want me to come by
and pick you up at 11:30? Oh, are the rest of us still meeting at the bow
and arrow at 11?
Then at
10:13 she sent another message:
"Open table says they don't have a table at
noon. I called the restaurant. What time are the rest of us
meeting? Still at 11: I called the Plant and am hoping for a call
back."
At 10:02
Nicki sent a message identical to the one she'd sent at 9:48: "I
will meet you at the restaurant at 12:00. Thanks." This
might have just been a second click on "Send." But it showed no
awareness that things weren't certain at The Plant.
At 10:15 Jana wrote, "We can go to the Slanted Door
from The Plant if we want. Something will work out."
Then I
happened to see an article on Ruth Asawa, and one of the sculptures pictured
happed to be at the Embarcadero. So I
walked to West Portal and took MUNI to the Embarcadero, where I asked a man
setting up a booth where 133 Embarcadero was.
He didn’t know but kindly left his booth (unattended, which seemed to
worry me more than him) and showed me a map on another side of Embarcadero
Plaza. Then I asked him whether he knew where the arrow was, and he shook his
head but later ran after me to point in the direction I was, happily, going. It turned out that Ruth Asawa’s Aurora was
right across the street from the arrow, where Sarah had suggested meeting. (Behind in my reading and still looking at my
e-mail by size, I’d completely missed the messages from Betsy about meeting at
Pete’s at the Ferry Building.)
It
wasn't far to the Ruth Asawa sculpture, but when I got there it was noisy, so I
sent Sarah an e-mail about where I was--just across the street from the meeting
spot she'd suggested-- and then, realizing that I didn’t have Jana’s cell
phone, I called Sarah on her cell phone.
I told her about the Ruth Asawa sculpture and the photo-op it
provided--just in case she hadn't seen my e-message.
I
gave her the address and said again that it was across the street from the
arrow! She told me that they were on
their way, but Betsy had called saying she might be late. I was early but enjoyed the scene. Betsy came along about 10 minutes after I got
there, and we had the chance to talk while we waited for Jana and Sarah. It was a hot day, but we wanted to be sure
they could see us so we stood out by the sculpture and imagined jumping in the
water surrounding “Aurora.” Betsy and I
both got calls, but she got to hers first.
Sarah and Jana couldn’t find us.
I didn’t
hear what Betsy told them, but I don’t think it occurred to either of us to
give them the cross street, Howard, which would have made it a cinch. When Sarah arrived, she said, “Tina, next
time don’t change the meeting place!” or
something to that effect. Apparently
they hadn’t found it with the ease Betsy and I had, and I thought that maybe
they wouldn’t be in the mood for the group picture I hoped to take. But they quickly recovered, posed and took
turns taking pictures, and then we
walked on to the Ferry Building.
Somewhere in all this, Nicki, who was meeting
us at noon at the Plant, contacted Jana to say she couldn’t find us. Had she gotten to the Plant early, not seeing
the message Jana said about no reservations there? We walked on past Peet’s Coffee Shop, where
Betsy had originally suggested meeting.
But could we really have done without our time at (and getting to) the
Ruth Asawa sculpture in the newspaper that very morning? Something tells me the others were thinking,
"Yes!" But, once I’d gotten us
a table and Jana had circled the Ferry Building and Sarah and Betsy had gone to
the bathroom and we’d each gone back a couple of times to where we’d
“signed in,” Nicki showed up and we were all seated.
By that
time, I’d quoted to Sarah and Betsy the Viktor Frankl quote that when
everything else is taken away from us, one thing remains—our choice on how to
react.
I
acknowledged that this was said in the context of a concentration camp, not a
social luncheon.
Anyway,
to my surprise and relief, everyone seemed in good spirits and we had a
delicious all-vegetarian lunch, which included a salad shown in the SF
Chronicle.
*
In fact
there was a follow-up of very warm messages from Betsy, Jana and Sarah, making
me aware of what wonderful people they are—even when put the Torturous Planning
Test.
No comments:
Post a Comment