Redwoods Baseball

This story begins with explanations. It’s all true and the characters are real, but the point of view is distant, filtered and subjective, so it must be called a work of fiction. This version all happened just as it is written. It is a story of love and loss, death and denial, alienation and loss. The happy dénouement is only suggestion. Conflicts with nature/god, others, and self move the story, but the truth is fluid. This account is like a Homer Winslow still life watercolor -frozen in time, and/or a Brian Eno or Philip Glass composition about the meaning of change. The story is about wine and hippies, religion and physics. It’s about classical music and the sound of the “Summer of Love.” There is a hero, and she is magnificent. All the characters are good and trying to be better. San Francisco provides the backdrop and becomes it’s own character, a kind of sidebar narrative or Greek chorus. We go there now; the chorus speaks.

In San Francisco it rains more days in than in Seattle, or so they say. The greatest surfing wave in the world is at Mavericks, just south of the city. In the summer, it disappears. But around Christmas and January, the monster roars full force and the word goes out across the globe that the wave is right and a surfing competition begins. Just as quickly, the wave is gone again. Things are like that in San Francisco.

San Francisco’s great legacy is the tumultuous 1960’s and early 1970’s, when a generation of children symbolically put flowers in their hair and dreamed new dreams. The famous symbolic heart of that era, capture by a famous poster of a street sign at the corner at Haight and Ashbury ,is now home to a sad row of tattoo parlors, dives and spiritless tie-dye shirt shops. The co-ops and open couches, street dances and park bands of that era are all gone. San Francisco could once name an entire summer after love, and it was pure, un-cut truth. Not even a credit card can buy love now. Illusions dance in memories of Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead and Moby Grape. Around 1967, the first bearded male transvestites danced in a review called the Cockettes and everyone knew everything would forever be different. Now, in the greatest contradiction of all, the most vibrant, alive, and reckless city in the world seems spent. From the north end of the great San Francisco Bridge to the callow, digital Google fields to the south, a city waits for its Stravinsky to usher in a new Rite of Spring. Uncle John’s band is silent.

It was Clinton’s bombs in Eastern Europe and the promise of a job that brought Boris to San Francisco. Reducing meaning to “+ and –“ was changing all communication, and Boris had the knack for computers, as well as the will to move to a strange, new country. When you use an Internet phone now, Boris probably had a hand in it. Fortunes came and went and then mostly came again for Boris. His children grew up Americanized but with a keen sense of their homeland. They all talk about the day they went to the redwood forest and played baseball, speaking their native language but immersed in California culture. It is a great story and a great family. They miraculously kept their feet in two worlds. Boris and his wife Mirjana created a safe harbor for their cultural heritage and enjoyed an extended family of fellow Croatians along the wondrous San Francisco Bay. Boris taught his children to take the time to prepare fine meals and then to linger over them. He loved a great wine and liked it all the more when it cost less than $15 a bottle. A committed atheist, Boris honored facts and scientific proof. Nothing scared him, and when he first saw Mirjana, the story goes that he courted her on his motorcycle with an unwavering faith that they would be together.

A cancer diagnosis and then a lingering, painful death took Mirjana, the wife and mother, in 2007. Mirjana was exceptional. She brought a family to a new world, learned the language and ways, mastered it all; but kept her core. At her memorial service, speaker after speaker explained M. had been the rock. M. had diffused the hardest situation. M. was the one they wanted to be like one day. A picture of her just days before her death tells the story best. In her face you can see the spirit that the cancer could not ever take.

Mirjana was central station to the lives of her husband and two children, Lana and Igor. Every departure, every incoming train, every connection to another destination came though Mirjana. She was the huge sun around which her family circled, held in check by the unalterable forces of gravity and light. Lana, the youngest child, and Mirjana’s treasured daughter, circled in her orbit taking so much life from a mother sun. Lana turned her back from time to time, but her rotation continually spun forward toward the light held secure by the gravity of love. Her elliptical orbit and the seemingly unending cycle created a glorious endless summer. Lana would not be ready for winter.

Mirjana ran a daycare for children. It was a natural calling for somebody who cared so deeply about children. Everything she touched carried her signature of quality and personal attention. Coming to Mirjana’s home was an invitation to join the amazing extended family she had helped create. Mirjana defined graciousness. Every detail was attended, but all was inviting and made soft by grace. When Mirjana died at home, the mirrors went dark, reflecting no light. The trains stopped running, and the chaos of earthquake came upon the City by the Bay.

Lana is beautiful. Her kindness and sensitivity sparkle in dark Eastern European eyes. Hands that comfort and arms that hold are graceful reminders of a good heart and caring ways. Her hair shines black and her lips twist, smiling when she’s trying to find her way to help. She has all the gifts, all the basics made even sweeter by her personhood. She is a social genius mastering every situation that involves human contact with such apparent ease as to make one think all relationships come easy for her. She too has contradictions -- a delicate beauty with tomboy surfer-girl ways. She laughs too loud and seems too vulnerable to handle social vagaries with such ease.

Lana is so California and yet, has never seen ‘Star Wars’. She can look like a girl next door one day and then show up at the Absinthe bar looking sultry and gypsy, telling futures in smoke and palm. You would never know the challenges she faced with language, culture and society as a small girl. Lana is a survivor. To know her now, you must look deep in her eyes. Like a Van Gogh painting, every stroke means something that means something more. What you might see first is not what you get. What you get, depends. Her mother’s death brought a loss of course, light and balance.

San Francisco, the city and the idea, is a force of nature. Like the winter storms that cause Mavericks to erupt, there are times the city can mark its will on every thing and person. Moth to flame, the kids come to see how close to the sun they might fly. The lawyer bar exam in California is legendary hard. A law career in the city proper belongs only to the rich, connected and crazy smart. Renting a “room” in a house costs $1,300 a month for the lucky person who finds it on Craig’s List. Still they come to the city to paddle out to a four-story wave, or to work 80-hour weeks in the financial district and to test youth’s metal in the earth’s hottest furnace.

Like the great earthquakes that will one-day devastate the city, a zeitgeist fault line runs under San Francisco. Somehow, every few decades the connections crack and the city shifts. It burns and shakes, roads ripple and pipes burst; but in theses times of crisis; genius, resilience and ingenuity also ooze out from the fault line. Artists and composers, dancers and poets, chefs and confectioners, vintners and prophets, peacemakers and earth lovers, sky pilots and needle dancers --all the children know San Francisco’s core, and they come, pounding the pavement with giant sledges of creativity and change. San Francisco is their distant drummer. They say great wine must rest, but the truth is a chemical firestorm changes the grapes. San Francisco is resting now, spent from the rigor of many magnificent harvests. Still, young people and dreamers must come. Their music is forming, taking spirit from the very ground and air where so much meaning still remains. The artists are starving, but the ground is cracking; its 8:05, and we are leaving soon.

Before Mirjana’s death, Lana and her then boyfriend Zach moved in with Lana’s Mom and Dad. They would bring comfort, concern, witness and presence to Mirjana’s death. Unfortunately, California Christianity barged in as Hospice help. For the already hurting, heaven and all the hope of meeting again in some fantastical afterlife is aggravating, insulting nonsense. A difficult time was made worse. The edges became jagged and then chunks of life’s meaning broke off and disappeared in the sadness. A sun was going out. Such times enter the realm of raw emotion live in great music. Beethoven found that what is not accessible with words, can be approached in sound. It was his powerful Fifth Symphony that played as six months of unrelenting death drained even the shadows from the lives of those at the epicenter. Mirjana suffered beyond comprehension, railing against the unfairness and the diminishment of her living. The swirling banshees of anger, relentless pain and grief consumed both light and air for Boris, Lana, Igor and Zach. Everyone gave all they had to ease Mirjana’s journey, to salvage dignity, and to hold the soul’s light for as long as they could, but all were dying in the dark.

Zach is rare good spirit. He has had to fight hard for even the smallest doses of recognition in his life. Administrators would not put him in advanced math as a third grader until his mom pitched a fit. He then became one of the stars of the class. That story was repeated over and over, from college to law school, from the bar exam to staking a claim to a professional life. Zach was always underestimated and sometimes misunderstood. He could be cranky and defensive as a result.

Z is the glue that holds circles of friends together. Z is the tour guide who makes everything better. Z caries the pain of others, Z is an utter failure at lying, reading minds, and playing cool. He is the heart that reaches out and is all-encompassing, the visionary that seeks to make a difference.

San Francisco drew him because California was the hardest law bar to pass. He wanted to make it big in the biggest show. Zach likes fine things, and for a child from modest means, he had to earn his way to San Francisco with grit, sacrifice and sheer guts. He would not hurt, use, or intimidate people to get what he wants. He could not sacrifice his values or his personhood to succeed. The limits, then are tangible, and the rewards elusive. Still, he states his case, defying odds.

Zach too is a survivor, a dreamer and lover of the arts. And though he is too slow to admit he is wrong and too smart for his own good at times, he can learn. When the call came to support Mirjana, it was not a choice for Zach. As a result, San Francisco, like most everything else in his life, would become a winding road. Like the San Franciscan he had become, he should have known that underneath the present situation, fault lines were ever shifting. Zach too would be spent.

Zach and Lana have the same birthday in the same year. She was born in Croatia and Zach was born in North Kansas City, Missouri. Both were living the life of liberal, young intellectuals when they met through a common friend. Zach was in law school in Tucson. Lana was an accomplished young contract wizard in San Francisco in her first year of law school. They shared an interest in a band and would travel to hear the music and enjoy explorations and friendship. Eventually they just started visiting each other without the band. Zach graduated from law school and planned a move to California to take the bar. Lana told Zach he could stay at her place while she traveled in Asia for the summer. The two ended up living together in a very small apartment  when Lana learned her mother’s health was bad. Lana could not, would not leave her mother. Zach failed the bar on his first try. Lana left law school. Mirjana’s illness was just beginning to take its toll.

They did seem to love each other. When traveling to wine country they would bend over maps and Lana would laugh her wonderful laugh and Zach would suggest one adventure after another. They had a life in San Francisco, an apartment, their neighborhood bar and their drink – a devastatingly dangerous French 77. Zach passed his bar exam, and it looked like some good things were about to happen. Then they moved into Lana’s parents home to give support to Mirjana and Boris. Choices were put on hold. Life got complicated. Some important things were unsaid. Other things were assumed. The dark tones of a hard death began to fill the time and space of their living. After Mirjana’s memorial service they moved back to San Francisco. Lana got a job. Zach got contract legal work. Both were unsatisfied and unsettled in new ways. The fault lines broke and the earth began to move.

The San Francisco Bay Bridge is to San Francisco what the Statue of Liberty is to New York. They are reminders of what has become a core value for each city. New York loves its liberty and freedom. San Francisco is a bridge to the next new thing. That the road from the San Francisco Bridge leads north to the Muir Woods and wine country is significant.

All the religion anyone needs is in the Muir Woods. Cathedrals, a sense of place and purpose, forgiveness and praise are constant, natural elements. Mix in a liturgy of hope and understanding, all blessed by a brook sheltered under a canopy of leaves, and you have as much religion as we all might ever need.

Further north in wine country a miracle of mind is happening. Almost nobody in wine country is from there. They all had callings of nature and chemistry, worth and being, that brought them to the vines. They had some kind of other life and it did not fulfill. Life moved too fast and they missed connection to earth and people. As a result, they are now working harder for less money that at any time in their life, and are happier than they have ever been. They make wine that is communion, and their wine carries the tastes and flavors of the soil, light and rain of their daily existence. They love what they do. That spirit flows south, down through the redwood cathedrals, over the bridge and into the city. It is a part of San Francisco now. A real taste for wine is acquired. It takes time and work to appreciate the complexity. The hot days, cold nights, picking, barreling and resting all change the final product. In the fall, the grape leaves turn colors and the wine is best served with bread, cheese and a companion on a blanket overlooking a field. While the city waits for a revival and its earthquake, some things still nourish the artist and the dreamer who waits as well.

Lana and Zach separated. They have reasons. Like the city they live in, they wait to move on – young, beautiful artists fashioning amazing lives. Over this grand landscape, the first rites of spring whisper the notes of an awakening new day. Crocus and daffodil emerge. Vintners are pruning the last of the vines and wondering about the taste of tomorrow. The slow drips of forgiveness and understanding are seeping through the hard days, breaking the ice and softening the soil for new growth. The night winds carry voices and the branches make music. They both are waiting for wines from older days to have their full depth and meaning. They might drink them one day and understand the complex overtures and understate hues …but, then again, maybe Zach and Lana are just bitter and angry—happy to be apart.

This then, is for Mirjana; the story’s hero. May her light and gravity once again, and oh so slowly, move the planets, though they are newly aligned and still lost and cold. The long reckoning that must finally grip reality will come. What bitter taste there might be from taking a wine too soon will, in later years, mellow and smooth through time. As there is peace in the still earth, there is a hope of peace in the new landscape.

Before her death, Mirjana wore a smile and gave exquisite oriental bowls as a gift to Zach’s parents. The parents cherish that gift and its connection between two families. The old folk know we all live life on fault lines and that earthquakes happen. Moments of beauty and meaning, connection and love, are rare. They are worth the holding and honoring.

The story ends as it should. The picture of Mirjana once wordlessly left at Lana’s door hangs on a wall. Mirjana’s great, good spirit can still permeate the room. On the shelf below is a bouquet of lavender generously wrapped with a purple ribbon. The old ball and chain is so many little pieces of heart now, at last given place, soul and sound. Somehow, somewhere, there is a happy memory of Mirjana singing a Croatian folk song. The music is light and clear; children are listening and smiling.

When things are done right and the last person is properly cared for with written thanks; when all guest are graciously welcomed and the place settings and napkins are perfect; when all children are honored, cared for, and included... there is Mirjana. A way has been set. A cascade of thoughtful, thankful mementos continues from her life. A fierce, unrelenting love of family that honors and holds both old world and new lingers on in Boris, Lana, Igor and Zach.

Mirjana’s rich tapestry with its woven strands of steel and velvet, tradition and youth, lover and mother, protector and provider, creates a comforting backdrop for lives that can, and somehow do, go on. The fault lines that cracked open and took so much have been given to artists and dreamers, caring elders, and still young but healing hearts. Now is Mirjana Krtolica’s dénouement.

It’s another day in the city by the bay. Riding his motorcycle up the coast highway, Boris sometimes remembers the Aegean Sea and still feels Mirjana’s young arms and hands holding him close. Up at Stinson Beach a quiet, confident surfer is on her board, alone, waiting the next wave. It is morning and the rising sun on a blue ocean brings a special peace to Lana’s life. Just a few miles away a fine young man is planning adventures. He has gone north over the Golden Gate Bridge to drink good wine and eat worthy food with close friends. When the Grateful Dead comes on the radio, Zach laughs and remembers the box of DeadHead tapes he and Igor sent his old hippie dad. Both Zach and Lana are again survivor spirits anxious once more to be on their path.

In a redwood forest clearing more toward Saratoga children play Mirjana Redwoods Baseball which means errors are forgiven and everyone gets a second chance. There is laughter as the children pose for a picture that will one day mean more than they can ever know. Things find their place. Different worlds coexist. Time heals. A powerful life-giving sun shines on the ancient redwoods, and the Mirjana stories will go on as long as the tall trees stand.