San Francisco

August 28 is an important date in my life.  It is the date in 1969 when I moved from Chicago to San Francisco.  Chicago was a lot like New York where I grew up.  Both were cold in the winter, hot in the summer, expensive and crowded.  San Francisco had no humidity, was cheap and not crowded.  It had all the necessary Mom and Pop neighborhood stores for a bachelor.  Like many people my age and younger, I had moved there in search of something.  That is, something was missing, or there was an emptiness.  Geography was part of the solution.  I did not move there for the job, but found myself living with a mixture of locals, who were comfortable in there own skin, and a bunch of searchers, though we did not know the search was spiritual.  Churches were not the solution.  Pubs, parties, camping, weekend excusions to explore the beauty of the state, and of course new friends who made me feel that I was OK in whatever my solutions to life were at any one time.  I discovered the 49er football team, which became a major diversion.  I reunited with my beloved Giants baseball team from my boyhood in New York City.  I fit in the San Francisco scene.  But I did one odd thing that I kept to myself.  I went to weekday mass in the local parish where I worked.  I felt comfortable there.  It touched the hole in me in some way that nothing else quite did.  I felt too uncomfortable to tell anyone else.  The mass thing did not fit at all with how I seemed to be living the rest of my life.  Much has changed with San Francisco and me over the years.  I think I have gotten better, but San Francisco has not.  It is crowded, expensive and my neighborhood is gone.  But I still have a room there, at the church where I used to sneak away to mass.  Grace can work with stange people like me.