Lovely Weather

...if you're a fish. During my first year in San Francisco friends said, "Here comes the rainy season", but a rainy season never arrived. It started raining months ago. The forecast here at Baker Beach has been consistent. When the rain does let up you feel like leaping through the Poppies and running to the beach. People in San Francisco get so excited that they flock to Baker Beach and lose the clothing. It's a mixture of delusion and optimism, and a local custom of using any opportunity to get naked. I stay on the clothed side of the beach now; it's where Die Junge Kinder converge.

Ha.

Anja and I are feeling cooped up. I wish she could play poker, but for now we play an exciting game called "Boo!" She crouches down behind something, waits for you to call out "Anja? Aaaaanja?? Where could she be?" and then BOO! You are supposed to be terrified and surprised. This makes her laugh out loud, snorting involuntarily. We play this game or I'm on all fours doing whatever it is that makes her happy.

Grown ups are busy. Too busy. In spite of never ending to-do's, babies have a way of making us put it all on hold. The house cleaning has been calling me. Every time I try to clean, Anja locks her little body around my legs, sticking her head between my knees. "Boo!" she says.

Like the rain, you have to accept some things as they are. My second Mother tells me the beautiful thing about house cleaning is that it waits for you. Anja, however, won't. She is growing rapidly. She'll only be our baby once, begging to be picked up and carried. Someday she'll look at us with music blaring through headphones, our lips moving silently. Ach. The thought of this compels me to put down the house cleaning for another day.

When she wakes from her nap, I think I'm going to bundle her up and take her to the beach. We're going to get wet.