After almost killing our backs packing boxes all day Saturday, Steve and I promised each other to not touch a single box on the Sabbath. After church, we drove to San Francisco and spent an enchanted afternoon at the free Opera in the Park, touted as San Francisco Opera’s annual gift to the City. Our personal goal, in our final months in the Bay Area, is to savor some of the uniquenesses that we will miss when we leave. We spread out our blanket and beach chairs on a meadow in Golden Gate Park, along with 17,000 others, for arias al fresco. And Steve even enjoyed it! 

Our ratio of sports events to cultural/arts events is about 9:1, so I was thrilled to get my All-American guy to join in something I love. I suspected this would be the way to ease him in, and it worked. About 16 arias from several different operas were performed to an audience nibbling from picnic baskets laden with wine and cheese. Steve didn’t need to sit through the melodramatic theatrics of one entire opera; instead, he caught the highlights. Kind of like Plays of the Week.

Maybe we’re changing each other. I know I have become fanatical about our baseball team, and Steve loved the Russian symphony we heard several years ago. I feel I must make a confession. When I was in North Carolina last week, I purposely, without coercion, turned on a country music station (Steve’s favorite genre) and I liked it. I guess our interests are being broadened and we’re meeting in the middle, and that’s a good thing.