Hitting the road can help you appreciate the real thing at home

Summer 1985, I was going out with Jim, one of the last guys I dated before I met Brian. He was from the South, so he fried chicken and spoke in a drawl when convenient. Most of our dates were local, in Brooklyn, on the F line, with occasional trips to Fire Island. I didn’t think the relationship was going anywhere, but for my birthday, he got tickets for “Sunday in the Park With George,” starring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters.

We walked to the Booth Theatre and got to our balcony seats just in time to hear the announcement, “Ms. Peters will not be performing in tonight’s show …”

“I’m gone,” he whispered in his familiar accent as we climbed over patrons in red velvet seats toward the exit. He went to the box office and got us tickets for a week later. “Standins are okay. But when I want the real thing, nothin’ else’ll do.”

We returned a week later, and Bernadette Peters was indeed brilliant. (Today’s coincidence: When she was still Bernadette Lazzara, she was in the same grade as Brother Not X back at St. Anthony’s in Ozone Park.)

But this turned out to be our last date. Jim never explained why, so I can only conclude that I was not the real thing.

Ironically, Brian was performing right down the block in the musical “La Cage Aux Folles” that same night.

Crazy Mike insists that I should have “one (column) in the can” for the week that the apocalypse comes and I’m about to miss my deadline. Trouble is that it’s our 15th week of Armageddon in a row and as yet I haven’t missed a cutoff. I’m not the Cal Ripken of journalism, but I’m consistent. Herb Caen famously wrote 14,133,000 words for The Chronicle over 58 years. My husband, Brian, has lesser aspirations for me, in that he sees me as the Hedda Hopper of The Chronicle. One of my readers, Brad Witherspoon, called me the gay Erma Bombeck.

But this column doesn’t have a category: Unlike Herb, I don’t know the city’s glitterati. Unlike Hedda, I don’t know anyone famous enough to gossip about. And unlike Erma, our family tilts more toward melodrama than light comedy.

This family: My husband, Brian; my sons, Zane and Aidan; and the dogs, Buddyboy, Bandit and Queenie, make for an odd set of mismatched parts, less of a china set and more of a quilt. We don’t follow a schedule. We couldn’t write about Aidan’s graduation, for example, because two days before, he still owed 197 math problems.

And yet, I don’t skip deadlines. But there’s something about having a column in my pocket that feels like cheating, like summer reruns. This column works without a net. The readers deserve our fresh disasters, not the school we got expelled from two years ago or the sump pump failing last winter.

So it’s odd, as we stagger back to the new normal, that something as mundane as glamping with the SASBs should throw me off my rhythm.

Yes, when the ink is dry on these words, the FisherPaulsons will be in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior but rather some random town in Central California. I honestly don’t know where. Stephanie just put her finger on a map and said, “We’ll rent a house here.” Just the two families isolating together rather than separately, less of a minivacation and more like a miniquarantinecomeasyouare party. Jigsaw puzzles and Pinot Grigio, but no higher ambition.

We haven’t gone anywhere since late February, so even crossing the Bay Bridge feels like an adventure.

Why are we going? Truth is, I’m a little jealous that my husband spent the pandemic home with the boys. While I organized patrols, Brian cooked, Aidan learned how to speak sarcasm and Zane got all grown up.

We’re going away because Aidan has spent the plague in the Bratcave, sulkily coming out once every two hours to take Queenie out to the lawn. Somewhere along the line, snacky dinner became snarky dinner.

Crazy Mike’s son, SomewhatSane Trevor, will be guarding the spoiled hounds, and maybe the time away from puppy Queenie will give my shoelaces time to grow back.

We’re going away so we can miss San Francisco again.

I love this city in the summer. When Karl the Fog comes courting Frank the City, we shiver and put on sweaters, and just a few days away reminds me of how cozy this town is. And that reminds me of the charm of the blue bungalow. And that’s because of family.

When you want the real thing, nothing else will do.