The ‘Ink’ Dries:
I’m not doing ‘Sunday Morning Shards’ this week. I’ve got something else I want to talk about.
Come tomorrow, my friend Roman Mars, creator of the Invisible Ink radio show that I’ve been honored to contribute to, will board a plane bound for Chicago, where he’ll be stepping into a new job as a producer at WBEZ public radio. His wife Mae and their soon-to-be first child joins them next month.
This means, among other things, that Invisible Ink is no more. The show will end in March and we will all be the worse for it. I highly recommend giving them a listen. It’s some of the most consistently entertaining, compelling radio I’ve ever heard.
Beyond that though, Suzan and I are losing two of our closest friends to the Windy City. We agreed to host a going away party for them last night. Come 2 AM, Roman and Mae were still there, talking and laughing through yawns. He’s been working 12 hours a day before he leaves. She’s 4 months pregnant. They still shut the place down, as they have done just about everytime we’ve had them over in the last two years.
Suzan and I have cried a bunch this weekend. Not only will we miss Roman and Mae terribly but we are both realizing as time goes on, that it is very hard for our friends to stay in San Francisco. It’s simply too expensive a place for many to plan for for a house, for children, for something resembling a financial future. That combined with a lopsided economy, still gasping for recovery, keeps them from thinking of this place as anything other than temporary.
Which wouldn’t matter if we thought of it the same way. But we don’t. We love this city almost as much as we love each other. Unlike any place we’ve lived before, it both supports and challenges us, urges us to be better and yet always welcomes us back. We’ve committed ourselves to staying as long as we can, beyond that if needs be. We can’t imagine living anywhere else.
We also recognize that this is a luxury. I own my home. Suzan is a student on full scholarship. We are not living under the same conditions as most of our friends. Over half of the friends I had when I moved here 5 years ago are gone. Suzan’s older sister has lived her nearly 20 years and is on her 4th complete set of friends. 4. That’s brand new friends every 5 years. Looks like I’m right on target.
We don’t begrudge Roman and Mae or anyone who decides to leave for a moment. We only want what is best for them, their careers, family, their lives. The bright side is that those who stay here have made the choice to live here, despite hardship, accepting the sacrifice. We have that powerful thing in common with them. The ones who live set up their radio towers elsewhere and beam the signal back to California. It means I have friends all over the world now. I could do worse.
Still, I have trouble explaining how hard this is, to look at your friends, the people who matter most to you and to not be able to take for granted that they will always be there, that their immediate presence in your life is a shifting fragile thing like a handful of beads. There’s nothing you can do about it. It breaks your heart.
So we’re both very sad. I’m home alone now (Suzan’s at work), trying to see this sort sort of learning experience. I’m trying to get to the place where I can appreciate the people in my live even more because I don’t know how long I will have with any of them.
I’m not there yet. Soon I hope.