I got up early my final day in Berkeley, not wanting to miss a minute of it. Suzanne shut the front door after retrieving her paper and I called from the kitchen where I was making tea, “I HEAR you!” She chuckled.

Mary-Ellis picked me up in the morning and we moved my suitcase to her house. She had “computer work” to do so I made myself a pot of tea and sat at the kitchen table studying Swedish while she typed like the wind on her keyboard.

Next to me at the table were stencils for making envelopes and a pile of calendar art with my name on it. All through the pandemic, I got regular missives, cartoons and Barbara Lane columns from Mary-Ellis, always in envelopes folded from calendar pages. I imagined her with a little assembly line on her dining room table, going to town sending cheerful notes to her friends and shut-ins; I was both. At her work station would be the pile of cut-up cartoons and columns, some notepaper, post-its and a selection of pens. Then the calendar pages, the stencils, scissors, address labels and a glue stick. Lastly her address book and pile of stamps. I envisioned her moving industriously down the assembly line. Her notes and envelopes are a good memory from those two weird years.

In the afternoon I would learn to fold an image of the coral reef or the milky way into an envelope. But first we paid a visit to the Town and Gown Clubhouse of which Mary-Ellis is a longstanding member and often the lead in their annual plays. Neither of us wanted to stay for the lecture of the day but I wanted to see the clubhouse. My only directive for the weekend was that I wanted to see her world though her eyes. Town and Gown is part of her world but to me, it could have been the set of a 1940s movie.

Luncheon was being set up. It was a white-tablecloth catered meal with bone-china dishes and silver coffee service. The food looked sensational. Women were dressed up in hats and heels. I was kind of agog, going from Shut-In to Country Cousin.

I wonder if there is something like this is Seattle, I thought. Well, of course there is. If I hadn’t de-activated immediately upon graduating from Whitman I could have been a sorority alum. Then there were the several years I spent in the Seattle Music Teachers Association, even serving as social secretary. I hated it. But we weren’t talking about me. This was Mary-Ellis’ world and I loved seeing her there.

We had our own lunch outdoors at Saul’s Deli on Shattuck Ave.– (Isn’t that just the oddest name for a major street in a classy university town? Anything that ends in “uck” seems a little slummy to me) –then proceeded to Caesar Chavez Park. The park is made on a landfill that sticks out into San Francisco Bay and is full of walking paths. Mary-Ellis said she walked the path several times a week during the pandemic.

It was warm and windy and for the dozenth time, I thought, “Oh this is the best yet.” My favorite part was seeing all the little ground squirrels, the scourge of the park but oh so cute to the tourist.

On the way home, M-E dropped me off at Andronicos on Solano so I could get some train snacks. As awful as I had felt in the weeks prior to my Berkeley trip and as iffy as my system had been over the weekend, I have to say I enjoyed being mothered a little bit by my good friend. It made me feel warm and safe. But when M-E started to explain to me where I would find the yoghurt in Andronicos, I put my hand on her arm.

“I think I can figure it out,” I said.

I wandered all over the store twice before I finally asked someone where the yoghurt was. And I still had to ask yet again when I got into the correct quadrant of the store.

I walked along the beautiful streets back to Mary-Ellis’s House of Whimsey where M-E was in the kitchen in her apron. I sat at the kitchen table making envelopes from calendar pages and feeling like a happy grade school kid doing a craft project. To complete the simile, I glued all the sides wrong.

We reminisced about Whitman College and told Phil of our escapades over supper. Mary-Ellis and I looked at her beautiful quilts—another of her arty abilities. And then it was time to leave for the train station.

It was exciting boarding the train at night. Again I felt like I was in a 1940s movie. My berth was already made up, giving me my square foot of space to get myself ready for bed. I took a slug of CBD tincture and gradually relaxed, dozing off and on all night. I awoke to Mt Shasta. Between the south and north bound Coast Starlight, the only part of the journey I missed through sleep was the stretch from Chico to Dunsmuir.

I tried to read Walden—it’s one of those books I have always meant to read—but 15 pages into it, I thought, “What a gasbag. This is like listening to a 14-year old boy go on and on about how great he is.” I’ve listened to a lot of them over the years. Self-Importance is not that attractive when you’re 27 years old. Having said that, I do like a lot of his ideas but I’ll just put a check mark by the title and move on. What is that line from childhood? “Let’s not but say we did.”

I did a lot of staring out the window on the trip home. As I might say about Thoreau: “If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains.”

It had been 30 years since I visited the Bay Area. This trip marked my first use of an Airbnb and an Uber but not my last visit with Mary-Ellis. I would make the same trip in a heart-beat.