I will survive

I just walked by the neighborhood giant corporate grocery store, which blockades of protesters had closed down. Nearby, a driver was taking a snooze in his parked water truck as the radio blared "I Will Survive."

These both seem like signs, things that would have fascinated or delighted Jenny, so I'm writing about them here for her birthday gift. She would have been 41 today.

I had breakfast alone at my favorite cafe, Itanoni, but I imagined her there with me, and with out birthday breakfast buddy Meggie, amid stacks of gifts and the blah blah blahing of constant talk we always managed to produce. There was something about those birthday lattes, the caffeine made us superheroes (if just for one day) flying along to a disco soundtrack. We had ideas and inspirations, we were the new visionaries! So now, when I feel more alone in my radical meanderings and surreal musings, I envision Jenny's vote in my favor. She was always supportive, but her unconditional support of me increased tenfold when she died.

The thing about Jenny was the Jenny of her, how she recounted the plot of a "Mr. Belvedere" episode to us during intermission at the San Francisco Shakespeare in the Park. How she argued the merit of books she hadn't read, but she was always right. How she had picked a favorite tree to live in at Redwood Regional park. She wanted the mystery, the corn maze and the pictographs. She was open to experience and she pried me open, too. She knew things. She wasn't scared of love.

She hides in the tiny and the shiny, in the deep rich earth, in the leaves pushing around the wind, the backs pressed up against Soriana's metal gate, the beats between the lyrics.