Erika’s Spring Break

 Our oldest granddaughter, Erika, decided to come to Berkeley for her Spring Break from Smith College.  We were more than honored, we were thrilled with this wonderful opportunity to spend time with her in our home turf.  But opportunities present challenges too.  I put much thought coming up with a plan of what we could offer that was new for her.  It was a big challenge as she had come to Berkeley many times and had seen most sights.  But she’s 18 going on 19 so her interests have changed.   There needed to be down time because it was her “break.”  My friends all jumped in and offered wonderful activities for us to do:  Sharona invited us over to do mosaics; Nancy invited us to lunch and a tour of San Francisco’s Mission District and Hanno invited us to dinner.  

Erika is an easy to have around.  She’s takes care of herself and is helpful, cooking us two dinners from NYTimes recipes and making two batches of cookies.  One rainy morning she helped me thread my loom for Erik’s late birthday present.  When soup boiled over one lunchtime, she cleaned it up for me without being asked.  And she practices her clarinet.  One of the things I most loved when raising our sons was the sound of live music, so her music playing made me very happy.

When I asked her what her favorite thing we did was, she said “going to Angel Island.”  On Tuesday, the sunniest day of the week, we took BART to the S.F. Ferry Building and took a ferry to Angel Island.  It was a pleasant half hour ride.  I’ve been wanting to go to Angel Island for a very long time.  I only remember being there once on a sail of Bob’s brother’s boat, but our son Paul assured me we went there as a family in the 80’s.  This time was the best ever visit.  It was so uncrowded, we felt like we had the place to ourselves.  The Visitor Center had interesting displays about its history.  It became a California State Park in 1963.  On a green wide lawn, we had a picnic lunch then went for a walk through the very beautiful forest up to the Perimeter Road, a wide paved road ringing the Island.  We walked to the Immigration Center where people from 45 different countries arrived to the US and were processed.  It was like a small Ellis Island.  Erika likes to walk in nature and we also enjoyed touring the Botanical Garden and walking around Cesar Chavez Park down in the Berkeley Marina.  She is great at spotting birds and wildlife.  

When I asked her what her favorite meal was she said the dinner at Hanno and Bob’s.  Bob is a great cook and made a delicious Gumbo with Bread Pudding for dessert.  It was high praise as we had been to Chez Panisse the day before for lunch.  

The week passed quickly with lots of adventures to remember.  Sunday morning all three of us travelled to the San Francisco Airport and took a flight to Detroit.  We hugged Erika goodbye and she caught a connecting flight to Hartford to get back to Smith.  We’ll see her next in Innsbruck in mid-May.   That young woman does get around!!

The “Eyes” Have It

 Last Thursday, my dear friend Nancy took me to SFMOMA to see an exhibit of paintings by Amy Sherald, the African-American painter who gained fame for painting Michelle Obama.  I am deeply touched she would see it again,  just so I could see it.  From the blurb, “This exhibition was the largest presentation of her work to date.  “American Sublime” brought together nearly 50 works in 6 rooms from her early portraits to her iconic figure paintings of Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor.”  Sherald, who is in her fifties now, decided early she wanted to be a painter and was influenced for her life work by seeing a museum painting of a Black person.  She had never seen anyone like herself in a painting before and told herself that she was going to paint only Black people and so she has albeit with gray skin tones.  The exhibit was more crowded than any I’ve seen with the timed entry line stretching all the way across the museum.  Perhaps there was a rush because the exhibition closes this weekend.  The variety of people attending was wonderful.  An older white woman in front of us had a group of eight teen-age boys of a variety of ethnicities with her.  There were many people bringing teens and children to see this exhibit.  The energy of the large crowd and the paintings brought an intensity to the exhibit I’d not felt before at the museum.

When Nancy took me to the Mary Cassatt exhibit, it was the hands in her figures that had the most energy for me.  In Amy Sherald’s paintings, it was the eyes that had the most energy.  They were incredibly expressive.  She intended it to be so.  A sign in one gallery spoke to “An Inside and an Outside” with many -most- of her paintings showing a split between a person’s inner life and the face they show to the world.  And this split was seen by studying the eyes and seeing the clothes, the setting of the figure in the painting.  This idea spoke deeply to me.  She has mastered expressive eyes- some sad, some happy, some quizzical, some pondering etc.  Her paintings were bright and very colorful and very large.  The video presentation showed her painting with a very small brush.  The paintings must have taken a very long time to do.  My favorite paintings were the one of Michelle Obama (in a room all by itself), a Welfare Queen, and one that still has me thinking what it is portraying.  It was a Prize Fighter, just a torso and head with no legs sitting on a stool in a boxing ring.  It was like a Greek or Roman statue with the legs broken off but oh so colorful.  So many thoughts went through my head about what it is showing.  After seeing the exhibit, we were both spent, so we went down the street to a quiet Israeli restaurant and shared hummus and pita and sipped fresh mint tea while we decompressed.  It was a really special exhibit and I’m so grateful to Nancy for making it possible for me to see it.