Hello from California! I’ve been settling in with my parents, and in the midst of that I had the great pleasure of meeting someone I’d only known through e-mail correspondence. Taking everything else into consideration, the best arrangement seemed to be for Margaret to come over from San Rafael to visit.
While San Rafael and Richmond are distinct in their demographic differences, they are separated by a single bridge and a little bit of freeway.
Map Quest directions in hand, Margaret found my parent’s house and took me off with her on her errand of the day–to find a puppet. A puppet of a red macaw that the library where she works would use for story time in the children’s section was available at a puppet shop in Emeryville . It just so happens that my husband, a special needs teacher, owns and uses more puppets than any single human being in Japan, so I was not going to miss this chance to add to his collection and get some quality omiyage taken care of.
Margaret and I quickly determined that neither of us were gifted in terms of “directionalism,” but we bravely got on the freeway, and sensibly got off at Emeryville–and were lost. Margaret is a librarian, so we stopped at a library <Shout out to the Golden Gate Branch of the Oakland Free Library!> and they knew exactly what we were looking for–it was a few blocks away! (Apparently you go out of Emeryville–a wierd town that is half landfill mall and half ancient factory buildings–into Oakland, and back into Emeryville.)
The puppet shop, which was more of a “corner” in the puppet company offices in an old factory building, was unexpectedly closed, but someone came out to tell us so, and Margaret sweetly persuaded her to let us in so she could the red macaw that she had come across the Bay to find. I followed her in and picked up a few lovely and reasonably priced puppets of my own.
We were back in Richmond in no time at all, after which Margaret accompanied Mom, Dad and I to Dad’s physical therapy session. While Dad was hard at work (note that I’m skipping over the description of my own culturally skewed driving skills that got us on that leg of the trip), the three of us crawled Hilltop Mall and completed a friendly discussion on Japanese literature and mutual poet and writer friends in the waiting room of the PT office.
We wrapped it all up with some Ice Cream Mania in Pinole.
All of the activities included investigation of various pressing medical issues,all of which were satisfactorily resolved, much to the pleasure of the entire group. My conclusions on the day are that there is really no better way to get to know someone than to run errands, sample each other’s driving skills, visit at least one of your homes, meet some parents, and take care of various and sundry medical and family business, and chat about your mutual interests throughout. I am not sure, though, whether there are as many people as good-natured as Margaret that would be willing to do that.
