Suzy Says

And here’s the story.

A few years ago, I was coming home from visiting my brother and sister, and actually on the Golden Gate Bridge before I started looking for the $3 for the toll (you have to pay to get into the city, but not to leave it). Uh-oh. No money at all in my wallet. You would think I would have noticed when I spent my last dime, but apparently my thoughts were elsewhere, since this was the first time I had noticed my complete and utter brokeitude.

All the time I was waiting to get to the tollbooth, I wondered what would happen. When I finally got there, the bored County employee called the business office (located on the ocean side of the bridge) and gave them my license plate number, and told me to go over there and wrote them a check. So I did, feeling like a complete idiot.

I never forgot to have toll money again.

But I didn’t have to worry about the toll since I was heading out of the city on Friday. It was a very foggy day. So foggy that the towers of the bridge vanished into the mist, you couldn’t see Alcatraz, and you couldn’t tell where the water ended and the sky began. It was all grey and misty and dreamlike, except for a mystery spot of golden sunlight where a lone, white-sailed boat floated.

With the wonder of micro-climates, though, it was sunny across the bridge in Sausalito and close to 90 in Santa Rosa, where my brother picked me up. We drove through beautiful Anderson Valley – I love the look of the rolling, golden hills with the dark green live oaks making deep pools of shade – stopping as usual at Gowan’s, where we got corn, peaches, and cider. I’m always amused by their sign, “Please park OFF highway”, because you just know someone actually parked ON the highway, at least once.

When we got to Albion, the town my brother and sister live near, I noticed that the flag at the post office was at half-mast. Turned out that the owner of the Albion Grocery, known locally as “the Gro”, had died of cancer on Thursday and the flag was lowered in her honor. Her birthday had been two days before, and the store had closed and her many admirers brought the party to her in the hospice.

In happier small town news, a family of barn swallows have built a nest right over the door to the post office. The nest is now full of peeping, adorable babies!

And at my sister Megan’s house, the sun was shining and the garden was blooming.

That night, we had dinner at the wonderful Ledford House restaurant, just across the road from the Gro, to celebrate Megan’s new EMT job. Our friend Mark was bartending that night, and the owners of the restaurant are good friends of my brother’s and sister’s. It’s an elegant, yet comfortable place, and attracts locals as well as tourists. The sunset was spectacular, as was the food and wine. It was the perfect way to start the weekend.

It’s my sister Megan’s birthday today!

Here’s how we looked 31 years ago, when Megan was a baby. How well I remember being called to the principal’s office that bright spring morning when she was born. I had never been called to the principal’s office before, and I was a little scared as I walked down the silent hallways, my footsteps echoing. As I walked to my doom, I mentally reviewed all the things I had done wrong recently, then all the things I might have been caught doing wrong. Then I was at The Office.

When I opened the door, the school secretary smiled at me brightly and said, “You have a little sister.” I had not expected this at all, and it was such a relief that none of my crimes had been found out. And oh, yeah, a new little sister. I ran back to my classroom and burst through the door yelling, “I have a little sister!” All the girls yelled, “Yay!” and all the boys yelled, “Boo!”

I’m still saying yay. And Megan has changed from a tiny, 5 pound baby to a tall, beautiful woman, and more than my sister, she’s my friend.

Well, things went pretty well yesterday. Number one, the rain that had been forecast with consistent gloom to be here from Wednesday through Sunday has yet to appear. In fact, the sun even peeped out coyly from time to time. Our stove seems to have recovered from its temporary fit of diva-ness, and roasted the turkey to perfection and turned out several batches of Suzy’s famous cheese biscuits (which, if I could figure out a way to market them, is definitely my million dollar idea).

Dinner was fun and stress-free, and no-one cried. I had my brother, sister and brother-in-law here, as well as my brother’s wonder dog Jed and his friend Carrie, who is expecting her first baby on Christmas Eve. I hadn’t met her before, but I really liked her, and it was a happy and relaxed evening.

Of our four cats, only Hannah was brave enough to approach Jed and smell her curiously. Jack, who thinks she’s so tough, barely looked at Jed for a split second before vanishing for the rest of the evening (later, we found her wedged under the couch). However upsetting this may have been to Jack, it did mean that for the first time since Jack entered our lives, we were able to eat a meal in peace, without her whining and demanding food, or possibly even jumping onto the table, which would have been really embarrassing in front of someone I had just met. So that was good, too.

We left the house at about 12:30 this afternoon with the intention of seeing “Harry Potter”, along with most of the city’s population. Insane traffic snarls, parking problems, crowded theater lobbies, and sold out show after show later, we finally bought tickets for the 4:00 p.m. show at 2:00 p.m., went and had a weirdly late lunch (hey, everyone’s eating habits are all screwed up now anyway) and finally got into the movie. By the way, all the shows up to 11:00 p.m. were sold out when we got back to the theater for the 4:00 p.m. show.

I liked the movie, but they fucked with some plot points for no reason (i.e. Norbert the dragon), and I didn’t like Hermione, but other than that, the casting was great. But Harry’s scar was lame (as my sister said, it looks like someone put it on with eyeliner) and I don’t understand why they didn’t give him green contact lenses when the books make such a big deal about his green eyes and this kid has the standard-issue English blue ones. But, having nit-picked and griped (and you just knew I would), it looked absolutely spectacular and the actors were wonderful. I guess with any beloved book, it’s very difficult to translate it to the screen and win everyone’s approval for how you did it. Definitely worth seeing, and worth seeing in the theater.

I never know what to do with myself now on Sunday mornings when Rufus and the cats are sleeping. I used to look forward to this time every week, because I always wrote to my father and always found an email from him waiting for me on Sunday mornings. He wrote to me at the end of the day, when he had changed for dinner and had dinner on its way. Then he’d go up to his study with a glass of wine from his collection and write to me, overlooking the garden. I would write to him on Sunday morning, quiet but for church bells and fog horns, the day before me. I have to say I have much less interest in my email now I know I will never again see one with the subject “Letter from Pooh” (our nickname for Dad since we were kids and he would tell us Pooh stories), but a part of me keeps on hoping I will.