Transcendent Friendships - I

There are annuals and then there are perennials – they both have their joy, their beauty, their glory. Unlike flora which can be readily identified as either perennial or annual, it usually takes time to know the nature of a relationship, and even then we may have a surprise or two as the years unfold.

I have a t-shirt from a business trip to San Francisco in the early 1980s; I associate the t-shirt with a man whom I met at the educational course I attended that week, I don’t remember his name but I do joyfully remember his hospitality; he was a native of San Francisco and he took me to places I would not have experienced without his hospitality. There was a favorite restaurant of his in Chinatown in which he ordered for me and another course participant dishes which were not on the menu; then there was Lefty O’Doul’s, a restaurant and bar where he purchased the green t-shirt for me as a memento. While we also saw the Golden Gate Bridge and the crooked street and rode a cable car and ate at a famous hotel, I appreciated my acquaintance’s hospitality more than anything.

I don’t wear the t-shirt for a couple of reasons; the first is that it is a memento evoking memories of a gracious and thoughtful host, the second is that the t-shirt says, “We cheat drunks and tourists”, kind of edgy and not representative of a message I care to send to the readers of attire I wear; but the main reason I have only worn it once or twice during the past 30 years is that it is a memento to me and not a piece of clothing. (I just checked Lefty’s on the web and while they still sell t-shirts they no longer appear to sell shirts advertising that they cheat drunks and tourists – I think I prefer the old and bold rather than the new and mundane).

My San Francisco host was an annual flower, annuals have their place of beauty in life and even though he bloomed for only a week in 1984 it was a bloom that gives me joy to this day.

To be continued…