So my Mom left town recently, hopping the train back East to the Land of Free Parking and Affordable Housing. The nice thing -- well, I should say one of the many nice things -- about having your Mom visit is that she looks at the whole life through Mom Glasses, which are closely related to Rose-Colored Glasses but without peppy, positive vibe that can get a little grating.
Anyway, so my Mom and her Glasses came to visit and suddenly every aspect of my life took on a pinky sheen. Living in San Francisco means living a little smaller, because every square foot of the damn city is worth upwards of $300,000. So you've got the wee apartment with the wee kitchen and the microscopic bathroom and the squeezy garage space with the post on the side. We drive a teeny Honda Fit, which I spent the whole weekend squeezing into ridiculously small parking spaces because I couldn't ask Mom to hike up hill and down dale just to get a pastry.
Of course, that meant a couple days of driving Mom around and watching my language as yet another bleepin' idiot stops dead in the middle of a small, twisted street and wants to back up to the parking space he saw half a mile back. Or the other bleepin' bicyclist who courts death by breezing through a stop sign and nearly gets plastered on my front bumper and then gives me a sneering look of Judgment. And I can't even swear, because Mom's in the car, not because she'd object to my language, but because she's obviously having a good time, snapping pictures of the corner drugstore or something and listening to her eldest child shrieking streams of expletives at bleepin' drivers who just stand outside their car door, in the street, blocking every body as they talk on their phone isn't exactly a fun vacation experience.
So I did a lot of mumbling as I drove and tried to keep the Scowl of Death off my face and everything was pretty OK, because again, we've got the Mom Glasses on here, and a funny thing happened ... I started to look at San Francisco through Mom's eyes too and appreciated again why we live in this city. (Not Muni though. Not even Mom Glasses can make Muni look good. The only thing that would make Muni look good is psychedelic drugs, which is a strategy some San Franciscans understandably adopt.)
So thank you Mom, for visiting and bringing your Glasses along to remind me why we live in San Francisco.
