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Seasonal

by TANIA ROHAN

It’s always fall in San Francisco. Sure, we might have a day or two that resembles something from another season, a balmy night or a miserably cold afternoon. We might even see a drop of snow once in 35 years. But for the most part, it’s September, October or November all year long here. A cool, temperate climate. Hoodie weather. This makes it the perfect place to enjoy heart-pumping outdoor activities if you are so inclined (I am not). It also makes it the perfect place to forget what day it is. 

Which might be why it’s hard to believe just how long it’s been since I came back here, weary from three countries in six years and about as many visa applications, jobs and fresh starts; skinny from more fun than food; pale from the London summer. My family threw a barbeque in my honor, so I fought jetlag to catch up with cousins and grandparents, speculate about next steps, enjoy my mom’s famous kebabs. By nightfall, I was drunk-texting the friends I’d left behind, joking that my return had been a huge mistake, wondering if it actually had been.

In the album from that day, there’s a picture of my Armenian grandmother in a baseball cap looking characteristically forlorn and maybe even a little amused. It’s the last photo I have of her. Less than a year later I’d be speaking at her funeral. That was the first time I thought: I came back just in time. 

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Within a few weeks of my return, I had begun to shed the skin of my former life, nostalgic texts and emails growing fewer and farther between. Within a few months, I had a new job and a new apartment. And thanks, in part, to the mockery of friends and family, it didn’t take long for me to ditch the British intonation/spelling/word choice I’d picked up.

I made new friends. I reconnected with old ones, sometimes by accident, a random sighting in a boutique or a bar in which we take turns exclaiming how little the other person has changed.

I got to know my family again. When I needed a break from the city, I spent weekends at my parents’ house in a sunny suburb on the south peninsula. I did this even more in the summer, when each mile on the drive down there seemed to bring with it another degree Fahrenheit.

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Summer is the coldest time of year in San Francisco. If it isn’t, it certainly feels that way. Year after year, countless 4th of July barbeques move indoors, thousands of summer tourists take refuge in souvenir fleece. While so much of the country hides out in air-conditioned rooms, we’ve been known to turn up the thermostat. The shops fill with clothes we can’t wear, not here, not anytime soon. It feels like a cruel joke — or at the very least, a lapse in merchandising strategy — that we can’t find a warm cardigan in the months when we most need one. Not only is it cold, but everyone seems to be in denial about it.

It is in the summer that we are most likely to find ourselves wrapped up in a blanket of fog, a mist so cold and thick it’s a light drizzle. A wind so fierce your scarf becomes a dangerous weapon. If you’re lucky, you might find yourself in one of the sunny spots. If you’re really, really lucky, you might find yourself in one of the sunny spots, on a hill or a rooftop, watching from afar while the fog sweeps across a pastel cityscape.

We wait it out, though, killing time until our Indian Summer. It’s hardly a heat wave and it’s frustratingly unpredictable, but a daytime high of 70°F is a fairly common occurrence in September or October. On those first warm weekends, the entire city seems to descend on one park or another for a dance party or a picnic or a nap. When the sun starts to set, we will immediately regret leaving home without a jacket. But for one afternoon, the sun dotes on a patient San Francisco.

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I met Daniel in Los Angeles one fall. By Christmas, we were in love. He was my polar opposite in every way except the ones that really mattered. Whereas I like “music to slit your wrists to,” he loves to dance. Whereas I’m always in a hurry, always knocking my knees and elbows as I navigate corridors, his movements are slow and steady, his actions calculated, precise. Whereas I’m disorganized, messy, haphazard, he sorts his laundry by six different categories. The first time I visited him in L.A., I dropped my entire bag of toiletries in his toilet. I watched in amazement as he slipped on a pair of disposable latex gloves (who doesn’t have a box of those handy?), fished the bag out, and then carefully washed and dried every item inside it.

That I found myself in another long-distance relationship did have me wondering about my capacity for something real, to love someone who was actually present. But this time it was different. This time, we were separated by highway instead of an ocean. This time, he moved for me instead of the other way around. After a year of back and forth, of weeks spent waiting for each subsequent visit, he quit his job, packed up his ‘98 Civic and drove six hours north to my apartment. That was the second time I thought: I came back just in time. (Though it was too late to prove to my Armenian grandmother that I was not, as she liked to speculate, a closeted lesbian.)

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Somewhere along the way I turned 30 and my life didn’t end. In fact, it was a surprisingly happy occasion. While 29 had filled me with dread, had felt like holding onto something that had long since passed, my 20s on life support, 30 felt like the beginning of something. What exactly? I wasn’t sure.

Somewhere along the way, I lost my Armenian grandfather. He was a strong man, a proud man. He was outspoken, brash, at times to the embarrassment of his children and grandchildren. He’d lived through Iraqi dictatorships and the Lebanese Civil War and hip replacement surgery. But in the end, I believe he died of a broken heart. 

Somewhere along the way, I married Daniel, changed careers, forgot how to drive, learned how to drive again.

At some point, I stopped thinking about whether or not I’d come back in time, what I’d missed or not missed. It stopped feeling like I’d ever been gone at all.

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They say that every seven years you are new again. That each cell in your body is replaced with a new one, and that that leads to a physical shift as well as an emotional one, a psychological one, a spiritual one. In my teens, I used this phenomenon to explain how my once silky, stick-straight hair had turned wavy and coarse. These days, I wonder if I’m on a slightly different schedule.

It’s been almost six years since I moved back here. Six years disguised as one long season — a fall that never seems to end.

It’s a damn good season, though, isn’t it? Maybe even the best.

Tania Rohan is a contributor to This Recording. This is her first appearance in these pages. She is a writer living in San Francisco. You can find her twitter here. You can find her website here.

Photographs by Kathy Zembera.

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