Monthly Review: March 2026

Photo by Mitchell Allen

There’s no snow in San Francisco; instead, the city is awash in fog, a thick gray that settles in the valleys and creeps over the beaches like a second tide. My first time in the city, my then-boyfriend, now-husband bought a fog globe for his small-town sweetheart from the Midwest, and it still sits on my bookshelf all these years later. The gray glitter swirls around a miniature Golden Gate Bridge, mimicking the fog that so often veils the magnificent orange towers rising out of the bay. As we dig ourselves out of the foot of snow that arrives in Wisconsin the week before our San Francisco spring break, I would happily take anything above freezing, fog and all.

But there’s no fog when we touch down Saturday night and greet my in-laws outside the airport, and none when the morning dawns. That afternoon, downtown seems clearer and warmer than my college visits in June. At the wharf we gobble mini-donuts glittering with cinnamon sugar, and we laugh as sea lions shove and bellow on the docks. The ferris wheel at the pier is new since our last trip three years earlier, and when we ride our stomachs swoop and dive with every circuit. The cityscape spreads out like a postcard, every landmark gleaming in the afternoon sun.

Our fastidiously-drawn itinerary, sketched on printer paper at our dining table, takes us up and down the bay, from the evening lights of the Bay Bridge over the Embarcadero to the shops of Sausalito to Pacifica where the neighborhoods bump up against the beaches. One day we rent one of the little yellow Go-Cars we weren’t old enough to drive when I came out in 2016, and we zip up and down the hilly streets to catch some landmarks we’ve never seen and some we’ve always loved. We come home in a Waymo with our cheeks pink from the sun. All week San Francisco seems as golden as its state moniker.

At dinner midway through the week, we book a table for 7 PM. Even though I forgot to call and ask for a view of the sunset, I’m sure they’ve given the four of us the best seat in the place to watch its slow-motion dive into the crashing ocean. Again, the evening is fogless. As I sip my mocktail and crack my crab legs, I know this night will file itself in my memory beside dinner at the Cliff House with my husband all those years ago, when we were still dreaming of this life and husband and wife.

It’s barely above freezing when we get back home (a true Wisconsin spring). But when I cup my fog globe in my hand and swivel my wrist like Mitchell taught me, those sparkles swirl up from its depths, happy as confetti. Until they settle, all seems golden again in the rare gleam of a San Francisco sun.

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Here's what I read, cooked, and created in the month of March.

What I Read

• Isola, Allegra Goodman (★★★★★)

• The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury (★★★★)

• Ghostlight, Kenneth Oppel (★★★)

• The 6 Types of Working Genius, Patrick Lencioni (★★★)

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (★★★)

• What the Night Sings, Vesper Stamper (★★★)

  
  

If you want to hear the rationale behind my rating, head to my Goodreads for full reviews.

What I Cooked

I don't think I tried anything new this month that wasn't in a cookbook.

What I Created

• A few pages of my project

• Some revisions on a 6-year-old essay from grad school

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May your days be filled with beauty, and may your heart be filled with the willingness to see and give thanks for it.