We bumped into Wilson during the coffee chat in District 1 as part of our ongoing coverage of November’s supervisorial race.
After a Wednesday-morning bike ride, Wilson Lam, dressed in a neon bike jacket, stopped at Blue Danube Coffee House on Clement Street for coffee and had some yogurt he brought in a blue Tupperware container.
Lam, who lives in North Beach, had just spent the last eight days looking after his two grandkids while his daughter and son-in-law celebrated their 10th anniversary in Japan.
Lam, 67 and a retired therapist, enjoyed watching the grandkids. He has two now, and will soon have four.
“It’s like a chance to be a better parent,” Lam said. “The chance for a do-over for what your kids tell you that you’ve done wrong.”
When his kids grew up, Lam remembered always wanting them to “behave” in public, but he now realized that’s not so important. What matters is “they understand rather than just comply,” he said.
Now, when Kota, his six-year-old grandson, came in punching him, as six-year-olds do, Lam saw it as “his way of connecting.”
“I need to hear his language, not just interpret it from an adult point of view like it’s misbehaving,” Lam said.
Lam and his wife, now married for the 43rd year, also found that when they were watching grandkids together, the same issues came up as when they were raising their own kids decades ago.
“I want to have fun with our kids, but my wife is like, ‘they have to finish their dinner!’” Lam said. “It’s interesting how life is always a challenge, in terms of how you deal with conflict, even in these long-term relationships.”
Lam said he spends a lot of time thinking about getting older. Recently he was “half-teasing” his kids that he was coming up with a list of good reasons to die — not that he wanted to, he reassured this reporter.
The first one on the list is, Lam said, “you free your kids from your judgment.” He thought about this when his mom passed away 18 years ago. “As much as I love her and really miss her, somehow, with her gone, suddenly I was like, there’s nobody over me that will say, ‘that’s a dumb thing to do.’”
To Lam, he wants his kids to have some years feeling that “they are free in the world to do whatever they deem best and want.”
His three kids now all live in San Francisco, after his son recently moved back into a Mission apartment from Colorado. “I thought they would all be scattered, but it’s been a nice surprise.”
Tonight, the family — now consisting of four smaller families — will be having an all-member dinner together, for the first time in a long while.
They take turns hosting family dinners, and tonight it will be Lam’s turn. Lam and his wife are not good cooks, he said, so they will be ordering burritos from El Farolito.
He knows that his mom would not approve of spending money buying food instead of making it, but he is doing it anyway.
The kids, he said, will love the burritos.