Secular Saints

When I was about 5 years old, Grandma S gave me a small hardcover "My First Book of Saints." Never mind that we weren't then and are not now Catholic -- I was fascinated by it.

Each saint had his or her own two page spread -- a stunning color illustration on the left with a short kid's prayer to the intercessor and then a short story of the saint's life on the opposite page. The saints were portrayed as ethereally beautiful -- flowing red hair on Saint Mary Margaret, green eyes fixated on a blood red Sacred Heart wreathed in thorns. Saint Rose of Lima -- so gorgeous she shaved her own head to avoid male attention, kneeling, pink lips parted as she feeds a little child from a bowl balanced on her delicate fingertips. Their faces were a mixture of passion and serenity; their stories were bloody and romantic.  Visions!  Murder!  Burned at the Stake!

The Protestant church I grew up in wasn't too keen on the Roman Catholic patron saints.  I loved the idea. Flesh and blood humans who were promoted to some sort of heavenly senior management position and who might be able to put in a good word with the Big G.

Last week, I found myself on a bar stool in Lakeview, regaling JP with tales of the time Freddie Mercury saved my life.

In another year, in another city, I hated my job. I felt it was eating me alive like row after row of shark's teeth. My coworkers and I spent our days in a cold sweat, struggling to keep up with the increasingly bizarre demands of our positions, trolling job boards for leads and cooking up elaborate escape fantasies. My friend N had taken to exclaiming "Please, Baby Jesus, get me out of here!" at regular intervals. Instead of Baby Jesus, I zeroed in on an icon of a different sort: St. Freddie.

In a job where I felt belittled and undermined on a daily basis, St. Freddie would remind me how important it was to sparkle, swagger and take control. His operatic wails were like holy incantations and I could picture him as an avenging angel, sweeping down from On High with his mic stand to vanquish my oppressors. He carried me through the last horrible six months until I won my freedom and a new job in Chicago. If I had any artistic talent at all, I'd make a little medallion of him to wear around my neck like a St. Christopher.

Last night, I finally got around to seeing Julie & Julia with two of my friends. Though Julia Child was still alive when Julie Powell was cooking and blogging, I instantly recognized her devotion to her own secular saint.

There are lots of them. Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson have their own temples, visited by millions of pilgrims. John Lennon might be one. Eleanor Roosevelt, probably.  Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Virginia Woolf.

Who else?

Being San Franciscan

I hate being a tourist.  It's like admitting defeat.

Maybe it's teenage residue, wanting to always look perfectly bored and cool.  Or leftover small town anxiety.  I never want to be that person dressed inappropriately, peering at a map, gawping at the buildings or the bus schedule.  Having someone ask me for directions in a place I'm just visiting feels like a victory.

But I think it's more than that.  Wherever I go, Bismarck or Belgium, I have to imagine that I'm living there.  Here in San Francisco, writing at a coffee shop near my friend's place in Noe Valley, I'm pretending to live in a city where the weather varies by neighborhood.  Where one block parallel, you find yourself climbing a hill that isn't there the next street over. 

And then there's the fantasy life I come up with to match.  The new friends, the perfect apartment with Robin's egg walls.  How much more together my life would be in California, writing six hours a day, eating avocados and fish tacos...conveniently forgetting how you bring yourself along to every place you go.

I love to travel, but it really brings out the feeling of being the ghost in the machine.  Like, how can I still be this same person when I'm looking at these hills and palm trees and an ocean full of Great White sharks?  And the idea of choosing a place, of saying "this is where I live," feels like a million doors slamming. 

I guess I'm hoping that it brings me perspective.  This morning, I felt like someone slapped me with a fire poker when one of my hometown Facebook "friends" seriously and unflinchingly used the n------ word in his status update.  This is someone who's never left our little town and I'm 99% sure has never met a black person.  How can one stupid line make a place 3,000 miles from where I grew up feel more like "home" than the community that raised me?  

Reconciling who I am, where I came from, and where I'm going is proving to be much more difficult than pushing the "Remove Connection" button on Facebook. 

Say What You Mean/Mean What You Say

At 7:45 this morning, my niece A. called.  She is three and a half, and on Eastern Time.

Sleepily, I scanned my brain for toddler conversation topics.

"Are you on your way to school?"  I asked

"No." she answered.  "I'm on my way to preschool."

One of my favorite things about A. is she demands precision with the English language.  She refuses to call Spongebob Squarepants by his trademarked name.  Why?  As anyone with eyes can see, his pants aren't actually square.  To A. he will forever and accurately be referred to as Spongebob Rectanglepants. 

Earlier this summer I was on the phone with my sister-in-law, who was describing for me how A.'s little sister crashed A.'s dance lessons and even lined up for an animal cracker treat with the rest of the class when it was over.  "She just marched herself right over and put out her hand."

"No, mommy!"  I heard A. insist in the background.  "She didn't march.  She walked."

Get it straight, people.