Good Karma

I was sitting outside at the Dolores Park Café enjoying my lunch, basking in both the bright sun without and the warm glow within having just helped teach three Middle School classes. This is the school where I have been a mentor to the music teacher and guest teacher of sorts off and on for over three years. Contrary to every public image of 7^th and 8^th graders, these kids are so generous in appreciating what I have to offer, giving me the nickname GOAT. I was confused by it because I’ve yet to play my Bulgarian bagpipe for them, but apparently it stands for the “Greatest of All Time.” Well, I’m not a fan of the rock star mentality, but if that’s how they choose to let me know that my half-century of work has helped me understand how to release their musicality beyond their own expectations, helped me know how to sincerely praise and appreciate their efforts so that they feel respected and valued, heck, I’ll take it! 

 

The day before I took my group gathering singing skills to Golden Gate Park to meet with neighbors and ex-neighbors who moved from my street, but still live close by. This was the group that began singing outdoors a few times a week during the pandemic and though the intervals between gathering are much longer than they were before, still we carry the tradition on. About five families came and the kids who were around 3 and 6 back then are now 7 and 10. A few of the parents wrote to me afterwards thanking me for the time and reporting how their kids were still walking around the house singing the songs. I replied that of course, it was my pleasure and I hoped we’d keep meeting until the kids went off to college. And then probably sing again when they came back to visit! Fates willing, it could be.

At the gathering, I went through my considerable Halloween repertoire and after all those slow, spooky songs in D minor, switched to the major scale and a brisker tempo to my social justice repertoire to buoy us adults up for Election Day coming up. That felt good.

 

The day before that, I went up to the Redwoods Assisted Living and sang with another group of some 30 folks in their 70’s and 80’s. Because of all those years of singing every day at The San Francisco School and playing piano and singing at the Jewish Home for the Aged, I have an engaging varied repertoire, almost all of it at my fingertips without having to read notes in books or look up lyrics on my phone. The happiness in that room was palpable and made even more special by the view out the window looking out at Mt. Tam. 

 

And then the day before that, there I was back at The Jewish Home again with the folks in their 80’s and 90’s and a group that I’ve come to know so I can tailor the song choices to their taste somewhat, making sure to include some of their favorites in every session. I love how some look so startled when they hear “their special song,” as if it was a divine inspiration. I don’t think any of them have Alzheimer’s but it is one of the benefits of diminished memory that they seem surprised by things like that. 

 

So here is my new—well, now in its 4^th year—retired life. All these opportunities to keep making music with the little ones, the budding teenagers, the elders— and of course, all the teachers in their 20’s through 50’s that come to the Orff workshops I’m still teaching. All kinds of music with all kinds of folks at all kinds of ages in all kinds of different places. 

So eating my lunch at The Dolores Park Café, I thought of that line from the “Side by Side” song I had just sung with the 7^th graders: “When they’ve all had their troubles and parted, we’ll be the same as we started.” And then it struck me. 

 

I first set foot in San Francisco in the summer of 1971, having traveled across the country with my sister, her husband and a dancer friend. We traveled in a Volkswagen bug—four of us in that tiny car!— camped along the way, cooked our macrobiotic meals of brown rice and vegetables when we could. Arriving in San Francisco, we treated ourselves to a lunch at a macrobiotic restaurant, the first eating establishment I visited in the city that would be come my home for the next 50 years plus. And where was that restaurant? On the corner of 18^th and Dolores, exactly the same place I was sitting now. “We’ll be the same as we started.” And the name of it back then? The Good Karma Café!

 

I don’t know what I did in past lives to merit the blessing of making joyful music with people as I do, but I deeply appreciate the Good Karma that perhaps made it possible. And so this moment of feeling everything come around full circle, with the fullest measure of gratitude I can offer. 

 

And then I returned to the school to teach another 8^th grade class.