San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Within confines of COVID, holiday season to remember
Earlier this year, I read a couple of books about time travel. One was “Earth Abides,” a grim tale about a Berkeley man who was one of a handful of survivors of a deadly disease that killed nearly everyone on Earth and how they rebuilt their lives. The other was called “Time and Again,” about a commercial artist sent on a secret government mission back to the snowy New York City of the 19th century. When I was a kid, I sometimes dreamed about time travel — how I’d travel back to California before the Europeans got here, how I’d stand on Mount Tamalpais and see the world when it was new.
Time travel seems just the thing these December lockdown days when we are heading into a blue Christmas. So, I consulted the Sailor Girl, my companion in small adventures. “What year was better than this one?” I asked. “That’s easy,” she said, “I vote for 2019, because everybody remembers it clearly and because this crummy year is so different.”
She had a long list: We could travel back then, we could go out to dinner, we could do a hundred things we can’t do today. Only last year, we flew to Japan and saw the cherry blossoms, took a ship to Alaska, went to London and to Edinburgh, had a glass of wine and some cheese in a garden spot on the Strand and a glass of beer and a meat pie in a Scottish pub. We spent spring in Yosemite and Thanksgiving in the Panama Canal. We traveled last year as if there was no tomorrow. As it turned out, there wasn’t.
We went to holiday parties of all kinds last year, shaking hands, toasting old friends. They were crowded and festive. Once, I think I went to three holiday parties in a single day. “Wow,” I said when I got home. “I think I’m partied out.” Little did I know.
Friends came over for dinner one evening. Relatives came visiting from Southern California, and we drove around the city looking at the sights. We went out to a nice dinner.
I have to confess — I thought 2019 was a punk year. I even wrote a column about it, welcoming the new year. Three cheers for 2020, which even had an extra day. So much for predicting the future.
The future turned out to be masked. No travel. Stay home. No parties. Keep a social distance. Stay safe. Order a festive takeout meal.
So, now we start Christmas week, one of the highlights of the holiday season. It’s not like it was, everybody will agree. We’ll watch the ghost of Christmas past in the Charles Dickens classic on TV, see James Stewart become the richest man in town in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Nostalgia will be in season, recalling other years, some both bitter and sweet.
But we can’t live in the past. You know what they say in poker: You can only play the cards you are dealt, and this is a COVID holiday season. Despite everything, this is the season we will remember.
The year everyone stayed home, the year families here were together, the year when people were alone. The quietest Christmas of our time.
It also seems to be a year when people notice things they took for granted. Jeffrey Walsh, an old pal, sent me a picture of a sunrise at Stinson Beach, the city in the far distance washed clean by the new day. Several Bernal Heights neighbors posted pictures of sunsets on the Nextdoor website. They appreciated the clarity of the December skies, especially after the smoke and the orange dawn in September.
People also noticed the hills have begun to turn green. And they saw tremendous high tides that lapped at the edges of the cities and extreme low tides that exposed the bones of sunken ships. They saw the power of nature as the seasons change. Earth abides.
People who grew up here often thought downtown San Francisco offered the best of the season — there were lights, and the frantic energy of an urban holiday. I used to make a point of going every year to see Christmas in the city, from the festive crowds to the sad beggars. I went again last week to look. There are no department store Santas this year, and no puppies and kittens in Macy’s windows. The big tree at Neiman Marcus is only tinsel. Many stores are closed.
But there are lines outside other stores; rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, Christmas shopping is not dead. The spirit is there, but it’s muted, like a carol heard in the distance. A man with a white beard was ringing a bell and playing a flute alongside one of those red Salvation Army kettles outside the Apple store on Post Street. The tradition of the Salvation Army Christmas kettles was invented in San Francisco long ago, in another time.
But this is our time, as difficult and different as it is. I am reminded of the words of William Saroyan. He wrote: “In the time of your life, live — so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”