Category: Manny Kagan

For years, the area in San Francisco where we live, Monterey Heights, has been known to be covered in fog. Not anymore—due to global warming or some other changes in the weather, the fog burns off quickly and (at least on the weekends), we have days warm enough to have brunch outside on our deck. Our garden is filled with mature trees, bushes, flowers, and weeds. When we wake up in the morning, we hear birds chirping. When we sit outside, we often see hummingbirds suckling nectar from flowers, a couple of beautiful American robins picking up treasures they find on the ground. Squirrels come to play on the huge cypress trees. It is a very calming place, but we also have squatters. Certain flowers in our garden when not controlled, spread and overpower other growth.

Recently on a Sunday, I decided to bring some order to the chaos. I thought I knew what it will take to do the job. But it turns out that I had no idea how much work it would take to do it right. But what was even more interesting, the following Sunday when I thought that I knew what to expect, I was surprised at how slowly I was progressing and how many Sundays it would actually take to get satisfying results.

To sell fast and to get more, clean the carpet.

After our friends’ wife died about 5 years ago, he went back to Moldova, where he is originally from, on a business trip. On his travels, he met a young woman, Anna, and after dating long distance, and traveling back and forth, they decided to marry and to move to San Francisco. We all spent some time together recently. She is a lovely woman, and he is very lucky that she agreed to leave her hometown to follow him with the intention to settle in the United States.

In conversation with my wife Elfa, Anna referred to her former country as “U Nas”, which translates to “in our place”—meaning where she came from. Perhaps over time, as she starts to feel more at home in San Francisco, she will change that habit.

My wife Elfa and I spent the first 25 years of our lives in Riga, Latvia, where we were born. Then we lived in Israel for almost 9 years, and now San Francisco has been our home for 33 years. Despite two emigrations, we feel that our roots are here. But for many immigrants, it takes some time to acquire this feeling.

Finding one’s roots relates not only to the place we live. I thought about this actually after I had a conversation with a friend who was born in the United States. When I reconnected with him, I learned that he moved to Pasadena in Southern California, where he works as a CPA for a large accounting firm.