And Can't Be Replicated

Seventeen years ago, on a sunny San Francisco day, perhaps not very unlike the one I just left behind, and not at all like the Beijing one I’ve just landed in, I held a little new born in my hands and the world stopped for a while.  I’m glad that happened with the sun cutting down into the misting of foggy dew that remained on the shrubbery outside the window at the California Pacific Medical Center, there in Pacific Heights.  That sun is uniquely hopeful, and can’t be replicated quite the same way anywhere else. 

I found it dull after a time when every day in San Francisco had the same hopeful glare.  But when it’s something you drop into and drop out of every so often it retains its compelling distinction.  I’m glad the memory is lodged that way. 

Beijing is also sunny.  Beijing is also hopeful.  I’ve just stepped into a cab to head home.  The driver is listening to a story from the Three Kingdoms on the radio.  No one is forcing him to.  He chooses to listen to a medieval stories and to be cultured.  My bag is full of little gifts for my daughter.  I’d worried a bit that perhaps a flight would be delayed and I’d miss a connection and get home too late to celebrate her day.  But I’m here.  I’m back.  Beijing’s sun is out there.  The sky is clear as well.  But the trees can’t glisten because they are covered in dust, and I suspect that even when Beijing becomes “the world’s cleanest city” as it no doubt hopes to one day be able to claim, we will be stuck with dust, from the dry climate which necessitates that decomposing particles fly about in the wind, rather than make their way to a river and down to the sea. 

That little girl whose umbilical cord I was allowed to cut that day, has grown.  Seventeen is well within the memory of my urgent adult consciousness.  And, so she has arrived.  She has said she wants to see schools that are in the sun.  By this she means California I suspect.  We saw some colleges in the summer sun last summer.  Those are colleges I know.  Near to where I suspect I’ll live.  But she’s not stupid.  She knows that the sun disappears in the northeast of the United States, and even though I grew up with seasons and she was forced in some ways wilfully by me, to grow up with seasons she was properly born in the optimistic San Francisco sun, as was her sister, where illusive hope is renewed every day, whether you want it or not.  I suspect there will be one more loved one in my life who decides to settle back there in the Golden State.

Sunday, 02/04/18