Goodbyes and Hellos

Returning to my San Francisco home was mostly a great pleasure. One final dinner together with three other teachers sharing the little stories from our past two weeks together over good food in a favorite restaurant. The evening was only slightly marred by the cold fog after two weeks of perfect 70 degree sunny weather and the presence of 26 (!!) damned driverless cars (we counted them) clogging the streets of San Francisco with their reminder that we have given up on human beings. I need to either go into acceptance therapy, move out of San Francisco or create a resistance movement of saboteurs disabling these reminders of how soulless we have become. (And come on, San Francisco!! Here? Whatever happened to the place that spawned the Summer of Love, the SF Mime Troupe, the SF Zen Center, progressive schools like the SF School, the Blackhawk/ Keystone Korner/ SF Jazz Center, car-free JFK and bike lanes everywhere? Have we completely sold out our Soul to Silicon Valley?)

 

Yesterday was sunny and I loved returning to my walk in the park, sitting on the Mitch Lerner Bench in the Arboretum’s smell garden, circling Stowe Lake, playing the piano on JFK Drive with passerbys stopping by to hear a song or two, dropping by the Dahlia Garden beginning its glorious bloom. Then meeting my dear Colombian friends Cathy Correa and Javier Vinasco for a bittersweet farewell to the end of their year in San Francisco. 

Cathy was my Orff student in Salzburg, Colombia and an Orff intern for four months at The San Francisco School and she came back to SF to complete a program in Elder Care. Almost a year ago when we first met for lunch, her husband Javier asked if he could play clarinet with me at the Jewish Home and so began a marvelous year of making music together there, developing an impressive repertoire of classical pieces, Latin American pieces, Jazz songs and more (thanks to his prodigious sight-reading skills!). He just got a job at a University in Greeley, Colorado and will begin working there next week. They both wished they could have stayed in San Francisco, but were also lucky that Javier got that job and Cathy will be on her way to a green card.

 

I treated them to dinner at a favorite Burmese restaurant and then drove over the Golden Gate Bridge to share the marvelous view of the city they will be leaving up in the Marin Headlands. We sat outside drinking it all in while eating some delicious cookies they had brought and then driving down the hill, I played Tony Bennet singing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Once over the bridge, I headed to Lombard Street where they had never been and we drove down that curvy SF icon before I took them home. Lovely all.

 

So after all the tearful farewells to a 100 folks in Hidden Valley, final goodbyes to my wonderful colleagues heading back to Barcelona, Munich, Nashville and yet another to Cathy and Javier, I turn to the next hellos to my wife, daughter, grandkids, in-laws on our little corner of Lake Michigan paradise. Looking forward to it all.

 

Especially driving in Northern Michigan without passing a single driverless car!