Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California, December 4, 2020
Late yesterday morning, John looked up from his computer and said with some urgency, “if we want a Christmas tree this year, we’d better go right now. Governor Newsom is going to declare another stay-at-home order in an hour and everybody is going to rush out and get a tree this afternoon before it starts. If we don’t go now, we’ll lose our chance!”
Although there were several holes in this logic: 1) it’s unlikely that a shutdown would begin and be enforced as soon as it was announced, and 2) not everyone is going to have a Christmas tree as the number one household priority as a lockdown begins and 3) few people check the news headlines as often as we do, and so they’d be unlikely to simultaneously share our sudden panic. Yet I was so taken by the vivid image of the streets and sidewalks filled with panicked San Franciscans speeding towards the tree lots and pushing each other out of the way in hopes of beating the lockdown and snaring the few and paltry remaining trees, that I grabbed my cane and followed John through the garage and into the car. We already had, after all, prepared the space and found the tree stand, ready to get a tree next week. We were ready for just such an emergency!
Pulling out, it was abundantly clear that our street, at least, was no busier than usual. No rushing hoards. In fact, no sign of other cars. We congratulated ourselves on getting out ahead and approached the local junior high - our usual neighborhood charity tree lot - with a certain smugness. There was even a place to park. But wait, the schoolyard was locked and on the fence a notice that all the trees had been moved to a central lot on Market Street. John groaned. “See?” he said, as if this was somehow proof that the hoards would be bigger and more cutthroat downtown.
While the traffic was light, we were forced to zigzag through the city, thwarted by all the streets now closed off in the pandemic to better accommodate pedestrians. John cursed the city traffic engineers under his breath. No tree-laden vehicles approached from the direction of the tree lot and, in fact, we saw fewer pedestrians than masked patrons basking at sunny outdoor cafe tables along the sidewalk. Nobody seemed in much of a hurry. “Enjoy it while you can,” John muttered to nobody in particular as he again checked the clock.
The central Christmas tree lot, when we finally got there, appeared - surprise, surprise - to be nearly empty. “Lucky we came when we did,” John whispered, as a masked couple with a baby carriage wandered six feet ahead of us through the abundant rows of trees. The lot is manned by those in a training program for ex-convicts (as if there might be a lucrative future in selling Christmas trees), and the guy who cut off the end of our hastily-chosen tree had prison tattoos curling up his neck and around his face mask - the first stranger I’ve talked to in weeks outside of hospital and PT staff, and he barely said a word. It took the guy forever to screw in the base for us, and get the tree on the car, but our sense of urgency was waning, so we stood back and let him do his thing. I tipped him with the few crumpled dollar bills we had between us after seven months of barely ever spending cash.
Back on our own street, we passed the neighbor who puts up not one, but two huge Christmas trees every year, decorated profusely with victorian baubles and lights. He paused on his steps and examined quizzically the tree tied to our roof and waved tentatively, as if to say, “a Christmas tree already? What’s your hurry?” We shrugged, waved back, and trundled the (now obviously and irreparably crooked) tree up the front steps and into the house just in time to tune into the governor’s anticipated press conference. No shut down. Not yet. but a start to our holiday season.