It’s the first Friday in December. The sun is shining, and I am going to go out and run those infamous San Francisco hills. I’ll zigzag up them, collecting passing stares from the immigrant handymen building fences and attaching Christmas lights to our mansions of Pacific Heights. I happen to live on a quaint neighbourhood shopping street in sweet, little Cow Hollow, filled with cafes, antique shops, bookstores and winebars. The options for grabbing a bite from anywhere in the world, and meeting friends for a cocktail is as easy as stepping out the door in flats. My visiting girlfriends always laugh at the incline, giving our walking credit for California girls’ good legs. It’s especially beautiful at this time of the year, as every building and tree is coated in twinkling lights – their holiday best.
Tonight we have our first Christmas party of the season, and no one does Holiday the way they do it here. I recall my sister and I collecting so many party invites we spent the evening looking for parking – literally all night, as we moved like politicians from one do to the next, my first year. I’m older now, and part of a couple, and twosomes don’t do things as much as singeltons do. There’s isn’t that primeval drive to meet your other. So we succumb to cuddling on the couch and catching Bourne Identity reruns on Tivo. Which in effect, is tempting to everyone, single friends included. We just give in to tired.
But tonight, we’ll crank up the espresso machine and wrap up for a night on the fairy-light lit streets of San Francisco. Because December is here but once a year.
