When I left Moira’s house on Friday morning, I set my GPS for the closest place where I could buy a warm, fuzzy sweater, which she had said was the Salvation Army Family Store on 4th Avenue at Geary Street. The weather drove my need; I forget from time to time that the San Francisco fog exists as a sentient being that coils itself around your bones.  It’s late June; I brought only a light jacket for my day in the city.

I had to circle the block twice. When I finally shimmied my car into a parking spot and disembarked, I skirted past a woman arguing with a worker about the traffic cones in front of the handicapped accessible space. I left her to it. She seemed capable.

Inside the store, a smiling clerk welcomed me.   I asked where the carts were. He pushed aside a large orange cart filled with puzzles and said we don’t have any. I gave him a quizzical glance, since clearly they had at least one. I looked further, towards the cashier and saw another one, also filled with merchandise.  I asked again where the carts were, thinking that perhaps he had not understood. He gestured to a stack of hand baskets and said customers use those. I reflected, watching him push the puzzles into a back room.  Then I decided again not to argue and moved into the body of the store to begin my search.

At the sales rack I discovered that there were no sweaters. But I picked out a couple of things and then I found a handmade mug for my hostess. As I went to pay,  a flight of stairs caught my attention. The signage announced, Clothing and Collectibles Upstairs. I asked the cashier if I could leave my things with her and she indicated that they don’t normally do that but she would make an exception. I told her that I would need to have one hand free to climb the stairs and she gestured to a corridor and said we have an elevator.  The irony of having an elevator but only two carts did not escape me; but I left it alone.    I merely smiled, thanked her, and put Moira’s mug and my other items on the counter and headed for the upper regions and hidden gems.

 indeed, there were lots of clothes on the second floor.  I gleefully pounced on a bulky cardigan in extra large, which exceeds my size by a couple of notches. As I checked the fabric content,  I remembered a YouTube influencer that spoke of body positivity. She encouraged everyone to buy clothes that fit them, no matter the size. She also quietly said and for those of you who think buying a size or two bigger and belting it is a good idea, let me encourage you to leave that clothing for people who need those sizes especially if you’re shopping secondhand. I put the sweater back and then spied a 100% wool jacket in my size and figured that the Universe had rewarded my virtue.

I returned to the first floor, only to find myself on the outskirts of an altercation between a worker and an agitated man who looked as though he might be unhoused, judging by his backpack from which many belongings spilled.  I stood watching the encounter, trying to decide if a judicious intervention would be helpful. In the end I let that go, too. I paid for my purchases and then headed outside to look for Green Apple Books,  where I discovered that the category of books I wanted lived on the third floor. Of course it did; but no elevator here.

So I dragged myself all the way up, picked out a couple of volumes, then headed back to the stairwell. Down is always more problematic, due to the great risk of sudden unscheduled balance adjustments. As I slowly descended, a woman and her child ask if they could go around me.  After they did, the mother looked back and said do you need help? I admitted that if she wanted to assist, she could take the books that I had chosen down to the cash stand for me, which she eagerly agreed to do.  When I finally got to the counter, I drew a large, staggering breath; quietly paid, and then went out to my car.

As I prepared to drive a half block to where I had decided to eat lunch, a gentle rap on my window caused me to look outward to the sidewalk. There I saw a tiny Asian woman, maybe 80 years old.  She wore a pale blue bucket hat, a tidy black jacket, and a sweet smile. I thought to myself, this is San Francisco, I probably should not open the window.   Then I thought about my son in Chicago and I asked myself what he would do.  He would, unquestionably, see what she needed.

$2 for tea, she said, and I nodded. I rummaged in my bag and discovered that I had two twenties and a 10. I offered her the 10 and she urgently declined, saying,  no no no I only need $2 for tea. I replied, this is what I have to give you and held the bill toward the open window.  She took it, said God bless you, sister, and then spoke something which sounded like a prayer in what I assumed to be her native language.

Certainly, having a tiny Asian woman pray for me in her native language was worth $10.

I did other things that day.  I drove to the Headlands to commune in the fog with crows and to Sausalito to stare at the Bay.  From a park bench at Fort Mason, I marveled at a swimmer followed by what must have been his spotter in a small boat, rowing for her life to keep pace.  Moira and I enjoyed a fabulous meal at Greens, a restaurant founded by the  San Francisco Zen Center. Moira took me on a night-time tour.    I enjoyed every minute.  But to be perfectly honest, none of it surpassed that simple exchange with a small, pleasant woman on the streets of the city, a woman who could have been my mother, my sister, or — truth told — even myself.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Sausalito

Seen across the Bay

On the water

Spirit animal

Moira Willis

Palace of Fine Arts, photo credit Moira Willis

As usual my inbox floods with advertisements for Father’s Day.  I squint at the list and worry about my son, but he’s so adept at keeping junk out of his life that he probably does not get bombarded.  I never unsubscribe from anything;  I just don’t think about it.  So they scroll past on my screen — ads for wallets, ties, golf clubs, polo shirts.  I close the lid of my laptop and reach for my coffee.

The shop that I manage has a Father’s Day Sale running.  I fill the Quote of The Day board with tributes to dads submitted by my cohorts.  A couple of regular customers come, and I wish them regards of the day.  They don’t ask about my father, or my son’s father, or anything else except, in general, about my health.   If they had inquired, I could only have said, it’s complicated.

Anna Nalick plays on the Bluetooth outside the store.  I feel myself sway to the rhythm of her passionate entreaty. 

‘Cause you can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable
And life’s like an hourglass glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button, boys
So cradle your head in your hands
And breathe, just breathe
Oh, breathe, just breathe
“There’s a light at each end of this tunnel” you shout
“‘Cause you’re just as far in as you’ll ever be out
And these mistakes you’ve made, you’ll just make them again”
If you only try turning around. . . and breathe. . . just breathe. . .”

I remember sitting on the porch with my mother while she smoked a Kent and drank overboiled coffee from a Melamine cup.  I can still see the tremble at her mouth, still feel the jagged breath she pulled into her chest.  He doesn’t mean it, she mumbled, more to herself than me.    I patted her arm.  I couldn’t have been more than ten.

I don’t write much about my father and I never write about the father of my son.  But today of all days, I think about them both.  Quiet men, each.  Both dropped out of society in their own ways.  My father tied his identity to the two years he spent in Burma, as company clerk to an outfit of muleskinners in World War II.  The Mars Men of Burma, his battalion was called; and there’s even a book about their experiences.  Whenever my father spoke of that time, he got a vague look and his voice dropped low.

My father’s mother told mine that her sons who went to war came home changed men.  As I heard the story, it did not seem to be a positive development.  War is hell, I suppose; and one cannot walk unscathed through the fire of Hades.  I do not speak much of how that manifested for us.  It’s not just my story to tell though its impact on me weaves itself through everything I write.  

As for my son’s father, he  was a musician in Arkansas who built houses by hand and used Japanese draw knives to make the most beautiful cabinetry that I’d ever seen.   My son looks like him, especially in repose.  He inherited his father’s musical talent, his artistic ability, and his gentle spirit.  In other words — he got the best parts of him.  I will say no more about that — again, because it isn’t for me to say.

I never regretted having a child though I wished I could have given him the two-parent picket fence story.  I spent many years helping men get equal parenting rights because I knew how important a dedicated father could be.  When my clients would ask what they should do to make themselves ready for court, I would stare at them intently, gauging sincerity.  The same thing that makes you a good litigant makes you a good father, I’d tell them.  Put the children first.

Today the shop has filled with grown children in town to take their fathers to lunch.  They browse the art and chat about their reservations at the local steak house.  I wrap their purchases and tell them about the artist who made what they’ve chosen.  They stand in the doorway and wait for each other.  They leave me in a stillness broken only by the sound of passing cars and the throb of music from the outside speaker.   

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

I raced an egret down the levee road yesterday.  The line of its wide wings caught the airstream  to rise over the path of a crow.  As I slowed for the dogleg next to the inlet where the old crane stood for so many years, the white bird banked and made the turn with me.  I pressed down on the gas and my car cruised past the Stars & Moon Park, beyond Brother’s Island, to the point where I ran out of public road.

I crossed over the slough by Owl Harbor, glancing towards the sun in the eastern sky just in time to see the egret cut over the road and begin a slow glide.  It skimmed the hyacinth and disappeared into the brush between the private part of Brannan Island Road and the public stretch of Twitchell Island.  I lingered until I lost sight of its shadow in the tangle of vines on the surface of the water.

In the southwestern sky, Mt. Diablo rose to keep watch.  A group of farmworkers stopped their work trucks on the road bisecting the fields between the levee and the Sacramento River.  I continued my drive, as the road narrowed and wound in front of houses and worksheds along the slough.  Through the low branches of trees, I could see light hit the pale flowers on the stand of water.    There had been tiny swans huddled between their parents in the undergrowth here just a few weeks ago.  I strained for some sign of them.

Around a curve, I slowed to peer through the branches at a long open stretch of water.  Then I saw it:   The meeting which the egret must have been eager to join, to fly so low, so fast, with such determination.  I glanced in my rearview mirror for oncoming cars, then stopped, shifted to park, and watched.

The group seemed quiet. Once in a while, a bird  would rise from the branches, flutter, and shift position.  Mostly they just held their pose, waiting, still.  A call came from within the trees, perhaps the morning convocation,  summoning  others not yet landed.  Another sound, shriller now.  A ripple moved through the group. 

It was me, I knew; or the sound of my motor.  I had no right; I did not belong.  One of them turned a regal head upon a sinewy neck.  Although I could not see that far, its gaze seemed to hold mine.  Whatever that egret might have been thinking, I took its meaning.  I closed my eyes and worked the gear shift.  A long involuntary breath expanded my lungs.

When I opened my eyes, the banks had cleared.  I studied the unbroken, vibrant green for a long minute; and then continued on my way.  Around the next turn, I saw again the gathering of angels, settling for roll call, unconcerned with the passage of a small human along the levee road.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

When I downsized, I limited myself to 21 inches of hanging clothes and what could fit in six small drawers.  Off-season clothes lived under my bed until a friend gifted me with an antique trunk.  But at any given time, I can boast about 30 hanging items, two drawers of delicates, and four drawers, 15 x 17, filled with neatly rolled slacks and shirts.  

In my traditional home, I started with a narrow closet on the first floor.  When I moved upstairs, I graduated to a walk-in cedar closet.  Eventually, I finished the attic and installed 30 feet of clothes rods and a full-size dresser.  I could find an outfit for almost any occasion.

But I’ve never been a clothes horse.

I can remember standing in my bedroom, facing the small chair in the corner where an impatient date sat jiggling his keys.  As I braided my hair, he glanced at me.  I saw his eyebrows lift.  He asked, “Is that what you’re planning to wear?”

I let me eyes fall downward, grazing my outfit.  “Yes.  . . ” I slowly admitted.  

“Do you have anything else,” he asked.

I turned and looked into my closet.  “I do,” I replied.  “But it pretty much all looks like this.”   I swung my hips a little, letting my dress swish against the fabric of my leggings.  My evening’s companion rose and pushed his keyring into his pocket.  He gestured toward the stairs, and downward we went.  For the rest of the evening, I studied the other women at the dinner party, straining to discern how their attire differed from mine.

My current wardrobe contains two pairs of merino wool pants (one navy, one black); five V-neck, short-sleeve merino tops (grey, blue, pale pink, green, and gold); two long-sleeve V-neck merino tops (teal and pink) and two merino Henleys (weirdly, both yellow); three pairs of merino leggings; and about six dresses of various weights that can be worn nearly year-round.  I have three summer sweaters, three heavy wool pull-overs, four jackets suitable for spring or fall, and  two winter coats.  Rounding out the collection is at least ten pairs of wool socks in two weights and the usual collection of unmentionables.  Stragglers drift in and out, given to me, found in thrift stores, or snagged from Poshmark and eventually donated away.

Chances are that if you see me in something today, you will see a version of it tomorrow.  Every piece fits the body that I currently have.  The colors harmonize.  Nothing swallows me, chafes at the waist, or shows too much skin.  Everything looks like everything else:  Soft, easy, and durable.  I wrap myself in the wool shawl that friends gave me, or the boiled wool fingertip jacket from my sister.  As the weather warms, I layer down or up depending on the climate both indoors and out.

And never, not in the morning, nor in the evening, nor at any time in between, does anybody ask me if I plan to leave the house in the garments with which I have covered myself.  

I love that for me.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®