Today at breakfast there was an email from one of our cousins in Perth, Australia forwarding an email from a more distant relative in Sussex, England with a picture of our grandfather and her great-grandfather who were brothers in the Royal Navy. I am awed at how the new technologies enable us to know more about our past than we have ever known. Tomorrow when my niece, Sholeh, comes over to teach me some blogging techniques I will upload that photo plus others to my blog.
I want to tell the story of my visit to my sister's house in Hayward, California. Jackie lives with her husband, Shapur and four cats, two geriatric sausage dogs, one bird in a cage, (also mocking birds in the garden who dive-bomb the cats) lots of small and large goldfish in a tank and in a pond in the garden, and a turtle that is rarely seen. All of these animals, except for the goldfish and the turtle I think, found Jackie and Shapur rather than the other way around. One of the dogs, Gus, is deaf, blind and demented but when we take the two dogs for their evening walk around the block he remembers the speed of his young days and scoots along the pavement, jumping cracks in a single bound. Sometimes the uneven ridges between paving stones defeat his little legs and he tips forward onto his face but he's always up straight away and off again. It has become my role to run with Gus and keep the lead short enough so that he doesn't fall off the edge of the footpath.
My niece, Sholeh, and my nephew, Sharokh, have left home now but visit often, mostly to bring their laundry around. Sholeh helps me with technological stuff like setting up this blog. When I arrived at SF airport three weeks ago today, my sister took me to meet Sholeh for lunch. She works in a small, establishing company that designs and makes great bags. She might be able to do something fancy like link from my blog to the company's blog.
On my first weekend in California, I saw Sholeh a lot. On Saturday afternoon, Jackie and I had our nails manicured in downtown Hayward. Neither of us ever do that when we are on our own, but it's a great social thing to do! The three Vietnamese women who worked in the shop chatted to each other in Chinese and smiled at us and Jackie and I chatted in English and smiled at them. We selected a purplish-red nail varnish for our toes and fingers. I will post up a picture of our four feet taken in the swimming pool at Mokelumne Hill the following weekend.
Thanks to the wonders of mobile technology, Sholeh met up with us in the nail shop and we went for an ice-cream and then shopping for some trousers for me. They make great trousers in US - they fit and flatter women's shapes but you have to understand the different sizing systems. Sholeh has two degrees, one of them in fashion design, so she's good at picking things out. I hate shopping and get frustrated after two seconds in a US store, but Sholeh makes it a pleasant experience.
On Sunday, Jackie and I got up early and went on the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport) to the SF Ferry terminal and caught a ferry to Angel Island. The weather was lovely. Angel Island is the next island out from Alcatraz and has an interesting history as California's first defensive base against infectious diseases, migrants, confederate and foreign invasion. You can walk, ride a bicycle or a motorised scooter all round the island and explore the various settlements along the way. We walked all around and also went through the middle and climbed the mountain.
At one settlement, we were invited in to the old bakery by a volunteer who told us about the history of the island and also took us into the restored building next door. I found the history of the renovation as interesting as the more distant story of military training. It seems that the buildings were restored by a husband and wife team who retired from their jobs and decided to devote two years of their lives to living on Angel Island and restoring the bakery. It must have been a huge job and they camped out until they had made the building habitable for themselves and safe for future generations to explore. School groups now visit and make bread in the old ovens.
There are small islands all over the world that have similar histories to Angel Island. In Australia where I live there is Maria Island off the East Coast of Tasmania and in Moreton Bay off Brisbane, Queensland, there is St Helena Island. The history of the place is shaped by its geographic location and in turn the history shapes the way we experience the place from our own time. I am deeply grateful to those people who devote time and energy into representing the stories of the past to help us make sense of the present.
When we got back from Angel Island on the ferry, Sholeh met us at the terminal and took us to her shared house in SF. She has a room in a large old terrace house. The set-up reminded me of student houses that I have shared when I was at University in Birmingham, UK in the 1960s. It seemed to me that it was a nightmare to find a parking spot but for Sholeh it was just something that you did. We walked round the corner and had Mexican food for dinner in a very busy restaurant where a Mariachi band walked in off the street. Sholeh is sure-footed in navigating this frantic SF world and I basked in the security of her experience.
So that was my first weekend in California. During the week when Jackie and Shapur go to work in their shop, I have slipped into a routine that gives my life structure whilst I am traveling. In the mornings I read my emails and write. In the afternoons I do the grocery shopping and household things. At 5.00 my sister comes home and we both go to the local community school where they have a gym and then we walk the dogs around the block. As I write, I love looking out through their sun room to the greenery of their back garden. In my next post I'll tell the story of our motor bike trip to Mokelumne Hill.
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