We are Lost

You came up the canyon, taillights from the freeway a sea of flashing red below, your backpack heavy as you scaled the brush-covered hill. You ended up on a lawn next to the swimming pool, the view of the valley spreading to the distant mountains. 

There is no street, no way to the city, just grass and gates and the semi-darkness of sprawling urbanity. There is a Christmas tree in a window and a light in the kitchen. You knock. 

I hear a knock at the backdoor. I look at my brother-in-law mid-conversation and wonder why one of my sisters has gone outside at ten at night when I thought they were both in bed. I wonder if the door is still locked. I wonder who the hell it could be. I go to the door and look out the window. There is a pale young guy in a hoodie and cap, a backpack, a nervous sway. 

There is a baby in the house, my sisters and mom. I call to my brother-in-law R. and tell him there’s a guy out there. He thinks I am joking. He thinks it is one of his friends fucking around. Then he sees my face. I back away as he grabs a knife from the drawer (a steak knife. He laughs about it after. Not during. During he just wants something sharp and he cannot find a chef’s knife so he grabs a tiny, proper, serrated steak knife. As if.)

I call 911. There is a man at the door and a baby in the house and it is night and that is what you do in the night when someone strange knocks on your backdoor, right?

I am on the phone when R. opens the door, his fierce don’t-fuck-with-my-family fearlessness kicking in  and growls, "What are you doing?" (get back inside, I yell to him) The guy in the hoodie stands a few feet away and asks, “Is that your tree with the light?” R. is as confused as the guy in the hoodie seems to be. What tree? What light? Why the fuck are you in the backyard? This is not said. Nothing is said.

(Baby in the house, R’s baby in the house, R’s wife in the house with the baby.)

The conversation does not continue in the dark.

“We’re calling the cops.”

I am calling 911 as the guy in the hoodie runs away. I do not know this yet. I just know he’s in the backyard and I have just spent the last five days admonishing my family for constantly locking the doors behind them, for locking me out when I go to get the mail at the end of the drive, for living in fear. I tell them of the house I live in up in Washington where we don’t even carry keys for the front door; its always unlocked. I leave my car keys in the cup-holder of my car parked in the driveway. If something moves outside my window I assume it is a deer or heron. If someone comes to the door (there is only a front door), we may welcome them in, ask if they want a cup of tea, assume that they are friendly even if a little odd (aren’t we all). But maybe it would be different at 10pm.

So I am shaking, on the phone with the 911 dispatcher saying there is a man in the backyard who may be trying to get in and telling them to send a cop. I almost say, “This is a private, gated community,” but I hold myself back because I am startled by the impulse to say this. I am embarrassed by this privilege. Sickened by the assumption that we should feel safer behind the gates and fences, that we are somehow exempt from disturbing interactions with other human beings that we think should not have access to this land. Disgusted with myself for holding beliefs that I outwardly disdain and speak against.

The cops show up. They are almost blatantly exasperated with us. They picked up the guy in the hoodie across the street. As in, he was standing in the sidewalk-less street across from our house, confused about where he was, where to go. He’s a transient, they said. Most likely harmless, they said. He’s not from here and was looking for a main street, they said. They would drop him off somewhere else, outside of the gates and fences, unless he gave them a reason to take him to jail, they said.

R. said the cops gave him a look like, Really dude, you’re bigger than this guy, why the hell did you call us?

Baby, wife, family.

Baby, wife, family.

Baby.

Claro.

And I wonder if I would’ve called if there wasn’t a baby in the house.

Probably.

If there hadn’t been a man in the house.

Yes. (I hate admitting this, but its true)

This bothers me, this fear.

I consider what I would do if I was at my old place at the beach or at the house I lived in in North Park. Most probably I would have answered the knock on the door or just ignored it and waited for him to leave. If there was someone camped out on the patio maybe I would have asked him what he was doing, maybe yelled for him to go away if he seemed out of it. I wouldn’t have called the cops if he ran away. I may have felt a little weird about such an interaction but wouldn’t have felt such a sense of vulnerability as I do in this big house on a hill behind the gates and security station, where you rarely see your neighbors as you overlook the lights of thousands of houses full of tens of thousands of people in the valley.

I wonder how much of this fear is perpetuated by the gates and fences and security patrols.

From what are we being kept safe? Why are we hiding? Why do we think it is so bad ‘out there?’ Who are the dangerous ones?

You were lost and I immediately assumed the worst.

You were lost and a gate slammed down around my heart, a fence obscured my eyes.

You were lost and you could’ve been dangerous and I didn’t know but maybe you weren't.

I fall asleep on the couch in this house I grew up in.

I am not sorry I called 911 last night, but I am uncomfortable with what it means about me.

I am embarrassed by perceived privilege and the isolation it can bring.

I am disturbed that this sense of Otherness is my deeply ingrained default. 

I cannot discount the impulse to stay safe; that is human. 

But I can work to connect more, rein in my assumptions, be present in a world full of people and lights and trees and confusion and kindness.

Maybe I’m naïve, but I would prefer naivety (hope?) over constant fear. 

I want to find/be the balance. Is it too late for me?

You are not the only lost one in this struggle to find a safe path, to find your way. 

Thank you for this reminder that we are all transient, all of this earth, all just looking for a way through a locked gate.

  

Get Storied

I see him every morning.

He appears before my tea is ready, between my sun salutations and watering of the rosemary and peas. Sometimes I see him walk to his spot, but most of the time he is just there: a boardshorts-wearing fixture next to the catamarans and seaweed resting on the sand.

He is sleeping now, cloth over his face, body tilted in a fetal position away from the climbing sun. Yesterday I watched the seagulls flock around him as he ate out of a plastic bag. Somebody's leftover sandwich? A burrito? Crackers from a cocktail party he threw last night?
I have not seen his face up close. I squint and make out a pale mustache on a tanned face. He must be older. Is he homeless? Where does he spend the night? But he doesn’t have much with him- just a simple backpack, a sweater, a baseball cap. Does he live nearby?

Why does he come to this beach everyday, settling in precisely the same spot to stare out at the bay, the gulls, the airplanes screaming overhead? Is it his communion with nature? Or is it simply the least awful place to sleep the day away after wandering through the night? Is this a choice?

He hasn’t always been here. This is a new thing. Months of a new thing, but my view was void of mustachoed sleepers until relatively recently. The moms with their strollers and running pants and cell phones all in simultaneous use ignore him. The hung-over muscle-y boys don’t give him a second glance as they recount the previous night’s adventures on Garnet beach-cruising on by. The dogs occasionally circle him wanting to play but their owners cut the frolicking short, apologizing while grabbing at collars, their bodies question marks against the shimmering water.

He has a story. I am sure of it.

We all have stories of course. Why does he seem like such a mystery? Do I have the courage to ask? He is a part of my life, my routine, now. I feel obligated to learn more about the face I see (or squint to see) everyday, right?

But that might lead to me becoming more curious about the other folks I see everyday. The man who cleans the common areas with chokingly strong cleaners and a pleasant smile. How did he get that scar on his temple? My neighbor above whose high heals I hear clomping above me long before I see her walk in front of my window to the garage every morning. Where does she go? Is she happy with her job? The barista at 976. What is she studying between frothing up lattes?

The list goes on and on. How do I have time to listen to all these stories? I have things to learn, work to accomplish, places to drive to where I will do lots and lots of stuff. Important stuff.

For my own well being, how can I not slow down and ask, listen to these stories?
They are my stories too.
We all have stories, we all ARE stories.
We complete one another’s chapters, novels, volumes.

Let’s write the world together.
It begins by listening.
And that begins by asking.
Even just a name.

This is my dare to myself: get involved, get storied.

Growing

He was sitting on the sidewalk in front of McDonalds, face tan and worn, ragged bag by his side. I pulled at my farm hat, fumbled with my phone, swung the watering can, walked faster towards the farm site just a block up Park Blvd. I wanted to seem busy as I passed so he wouldn't ask me for anything. I didn't have any food except my leftovers in a tin pail. I couldn't give him the tin pail could I? Should I?
Two kids sat across from him munching on Sausage McMuffins and all I could think was how can people think, work, get healthy, get un-homeless eating that crap? Sure its a stretch, sure people with jobs eat Sausage McMuffins, but think of all the clarity, the health, the work that would get done if we didn't.

"Hey," he said. Do I acknowledge or no? Yes, he is a person. I braced myself to tell him I didn't have change.

"I need to be watered."

I looked at his blue eyes smiling up at me.  I readjusted the watering can in my hand. "Don't we all?" I thought but didn't say. I was sorry for thinking he just wanted money for me and having to tell myself he was human, I should interact. But we shared a smile, a brief connection. He made me think and feel in a different way for a moment and I grinned my way to the flower site with the interaction velcroed to my heart.

We call it the flower site because we haven't been able to grow food there because there is lead. But we are planting marigolds for Day of the Dead and corn and squash to send away to a lab to see if there is lead in the tissues, hoping we have planted and amended and healed the soil maybe just a little.
I lean on a digging fork and talk to fellow Ag students about circuitous routes to becoming a farmer. We talk about geeky excitement over seed catalogs and marvel at red and yellow kernels tunneled into the composting earth. About wanting to help, change, fight, and realizing it all comes back to food. We talk about gangs, the prison system, the school system, our neighborhoods. That pizza is classified as a vegetable in cafeterias across the country and that nutrient deficiencies can cause anger which can cause crime which locks people away which kills our communities.

We all need to be watered.

Back at the main farm I stared into the bolting row of lettuce. There are two ways to harvest lettuce for a fancy loose leaf mix: cut it all down  about an inch or two from the base and let it grow back or take the oldest leaves from the outside of the plant leaving the newest smallest ones to regenerate the bulk from the middle. Sudden all encompassing injury or many small damages? Which is a slower death and/or which gives us more out of (it's) life? It will never fully recover, but what is the least traumatic? How can it heal most fully?

The row still needs to be watered, even in its shorn state.
Especially in its shorn state.

I want to give those kids eating Sausage McMuffins an apple, a roasted beet, a freshly harvested Purple Haze carrot. I want to reestablish the connection between food and feeling, food and action, food and living. I want to nourish and water and grow back the traditions we have lost that tell us that food is the most important thing. For our physical AND social well being.

I'll need a really big watering can, but I'll find it.