By the dawn’s early light God awakened me to ‘see’ my next day in San Francisco. I took a brisk morning walk down to the Farmers Market, a short seven block jaunt from our hotel. Vendors were setting up their canopies and adorning card tables with black table clothes and laying out their handmade jewelry made of forks, clay pots, woven hats and scarfs, dye tied t-shirts, and melted wine bottle plaques. The closer I got to the Market the more sophisticated the product with real gold and sterling silver original jewelry designs, fine blown glass and beautiful painted artwork. Along the outside of the Farmer’s Market were more vendors selling organic fruits and vegetables from their gardens with tomatoes the size of my hand and as red as my lips. In one direction the sweet smell of apricots and luscious cherries made my mouth water and in one turn in the opposite direction the calming aroma of lavender filled the air. It was magnificent.
Men and women held onto their ‘go green’ shopping bags and bustled around picking up fruits and vegetables, sniffing, feeling, squeezing, and tasting the samples as if this was their daily shopping excursion. I was empty handed and felt like ‘outsider’ was written across my forehead as I tried to figure out how I could get my hands on the largest Rainier Cherries I’d ever seen. Eventually I realized they had brown bags near the crates of goodies and it was up to me to get the amount I wanted, then they would weigh it and I would pay. Not so difficult. 😉
Later that morning after breakfast Neal and I took the #1 bus to Presidio Park to walk the trails, take a look at Inspiration Point and then we were going to head over to Lombard Street (the crookedest street in the world). We settled in the two front seats of the bus and for forty minutes I watched a small dissection of America enter on and exit off the bus – an elderly man with two artificial legs below the knee (who knows, could have lost them in battle?), a woman presumably in her 80’s dressed to the nines in white slacks, white tailored jacket with gold cuff links, gold flats and a tattered navy pocket book that she clutched to her bosom, a young Asian couple with a schnauzer puppy carried safely in a back pack wrapped tightly around the young man’s shoulders (this is their try at pre-children I hear them say), a woman with five layers of clothing ( at least two pairs of pants and three coats) carrying a big wheeled basket full of aluminum cans and plastic bags, and the handful of young 20-somethings some ‘normal’ (in my regard) and some with the dreads and gear stretched ear lobes. I did not see there would be any way we would stand out as unusual amidst the wide variety of God’s loved ones but leave it up to Neal and I to stand out like a sore thumb. We realized it was our time to get off so we stood and went to the rear exit (as we’d witnessed others doing along the way). The bus stopped but the doors didn’t open. I don’t know what to do and finally I hear this faint but sharp ‘step down’ over and over again (but imagine this said with a very strong Asian accent, more like step daw). Neal nudges me and I stepped down and sure enough the doors fling open. We practically jump off the bus because it’s already on the go. Neal and I were already crying from laughing at how that poor Asian elderly woman must have been so frustrated with us ‘Step daw! Step daw!’ 🙂
Eventually through the day we saw all of the sites we felt we must see since we had flown the 2000+ miles to get there. But what we enjoyed most were those little moments of seeing God’s people in an environment that was new to us. That evening at the end of Mass at the old St. Mary’s Cathedral we sang the Star Spangled Banner and I felt that wistfulness again. I realized how quickly I was going to chalk up my stay in San Francisco as a disaster after seeing some of the most threatening aspects we humans have divulged in ( lust, greed, sloth) but the following day I witnessed the joy of the freedom we receive in being Americans. I looked around at the very sparse congregation as we sang,
“O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”
What a shame we as a nation do not know this last verse by heart.
Neal and I are safely home now, celebrating this day of independence with family and friends. I remember on this day my dear friend’s son, Lance CorporalLuke Carney Yepsen, who gave his life in the trenches of war to make sure we could ‘divulge’ in our freedom. And I say a prayer for Luke and all the men and woman who have died over the past decades and centuries so that the generations of my family could be free.
God Bless the USA!
Shannon