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Refugio
Last Weekend, at Café Refugio with my family, a normal greeting turned into an hour-long heart-to-heart conversation. And when I say heart-to-heart, I mean “tears aflowin’ and laughter” and the sharing of innermost thoughts. We’d just met a new friend, a college student at SacState, who bravely responded to a simple question, “how were your holidays?” with a genuine reply. It took some guts for her to come right out with the honesty truth, but we were all the better for it. I know I left fuller than when I arrived and glad that we’d taken the time to just be there, to truly “dwell.”

Our Neighbors’ Cats
Our next door neighbors asked us to feed their cat while they were gone for a few days. I thought, “what an honor” this extension of trust: that we’ll actually do what we say we’ll do and feed and water and pet their two kitties, that we’ll respect their belongings, their privacy and take care to lock up when we left. They wrote a nice note with instructions and sweet kitty drawings that immediately caught my daughters’ eye. They made us some soup and passed on a half-gallon of organic milk that would go bad while they were gone. How nice. Trust.

Midtown at its Best
A family that many in our midtown circle of friends know recently have had two catastrophe’s within months of each other. First, the house they bought a year ago had a fire and much was damaged. They were temporarily living in a rental covered by insurance while the father/husband figured out how they could rebuild the house with insurance money. Then, he got in a motorcycle accident and crushed his leg. He’ll be doing rehab for about 6 months and won’t be able to work on anything for a long time. So, thanks to the initiative of one of the midtown circle families, we’re all pooling together to try and cover their costs in the meantime.

Borrowing the Cat
Kieslowski is my favorite director and topping my list of favorite films is Bleu. The main character, Julie, has just lost her husband and child in a car accident and she’s going through the grief process. Interestingly, the first thing she does is move from their mansion to a hole-in-the-wall apartment in the core of the city. She spends her day swimming in the local pool and drinking coffee with ice cream at the neighborhood bistro, listening to the flautist on the corner. She thinks that she’s seeking hiddenness, isolation and anonymity, but we gradually come to learn that’s not what she really needs. She’s lost somewhere inside herself and needs to be found.

A few days after moving in, she finds that her apartment has an infestation of mice. Death hits a bit too close to home and she can’t bear the thought of killing them, so she knocks on the door of her neighbor and asks if she can borrow her cat. I’ve always seen this juncture as the start of her healing — a humble request for help, an admission of dependence. Slowly, the pieces of her life come back together in the context of these neighboring relationships. In a final gesture of complete restoration, Julie gives her mansion to the lover of her belated husband who, as she has since learned, was pregnant with his child.

To me, the attraction of living in Sacramento’s urban core isn’t about being hip and cool and living large. it’s not the fast-paced lifestyle, getting in on the action and being a “player” and all that jazz–it’s real people connecting in real ways and being good to one another. I’m certainly not dismissing urban culture just pointing out what I think really makes that “culture” thrive — the strength of connectivity: if there’s an arts culture, it’s because there are artists and art-lovers who care about art; a budding restaurant scene usually emerges with a greater focus on local farms and fresh seasonal produce. From my vantage, the urban core lifestyle at it’s best brings people closer together so that we can more genuinely care for one another.

Jason