I am learning to relinquish to God. While I know my life's tribulations are trite, they are nonetheless my trials. I spent the day up in SF riding in the freezing cold wind. "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco ..." This is the truth! We had a blast anyway. My daughter finally stopped grumping and we had tea in the Japanese Tea Gardens. Next, we found a tantalizing little place to have a late lunch: Park Chow. It had a brick oven and the yummiest food (fennel soup and homemade bread for a BLTA). The "A" stands for Avocado-how California. Which reminds me of my first year in CA. I thought alfalfa sprouts, avocado, and wine pretty much summed up California, having come from Colorado, the land of beef. I would go to the grocery and get a can of tuna, a ripe avocado, sprouts, whole wheat bread, and a bottle of white zin. I would fix myself the most delectable California lunch and sit in the California sun thinking I had arrived in heaven. That is how the love affair began....The bottle and I were friends since the friend that had moved out to the Golden State with me had gone back to the Midwest. I decided to stay since I had started to take root. I shared an apartment with two other girls and had a decent job. Eventually, I would take to going to "The City" on my own to dance in the clubs. I even would head to the beach and order lobster and a bottle of champagne all on my own. I was truly "grown up." Little did I know, that I was actually stunting my growth.So yesterday as we ambled around the Haight after our delicious lunch, I wanted to shake the youth lounging on the street begging for money or plying for sympathy with sad little rubber ducks that they offered up for adoption at a buck a duck. One girl "adopting" out these rubber duckys had such gorgeous eyes she could easily rival the most famous eyes from National Geographic. I turned to my daughter and said "that girl has eyes that are only second to yours. She should not be on the street." I wanted to bottle up all my misery from my youth and show her that she is wasting time. Time is precious. Start living!!! She would not have heard me anymore than I would have heard warnings in my youth. So I pray that my daughter will see what I see and avoid some of the pitfalls of my life. Don't we all want that?! Yet we all must take our journeys and arrive at our own destinations. It is truly the events in my life that have brought me here today. I would never have had empathy for the youth in front of me if I didn't know the allure of alcohol. I turn it over and pray that they come out of it safely. I hope my own daughter has the wisdom now that took me 43 years to find. I know no matter how rough it gets, there is always worse. Imagine a grater for toilet paper!!!
