Mean Streets, Happy Canyon

These were the streets where he liked to hang out,” she said, referring to her son. “Everyone knew him around here."

It was late afternoon, still hot, and Caribbean music spilled out from the Cuban restaurant on the circle. A young Latina in very high heels and a short tight purple dress straddled a motorcycle, arranging her face in sultry expressions as a guy with a big camera and movie director affectations took pictures. A middle-aged couple walked by with a poodle on a leash, a mother with a squirmy little boy sat at an outside table offering him spoonfuls of rice pudding, and a college-aged girl with a pierced nose and a vintage dress exited the Starbucks next door carrying a laptop and a Frappuccino. 

I imagined him in this neighborhood, on his turf, feeling like somebody. He was probably not far from here when he was picked up that last time, on the night of his big mistake. High on meth, past his curfew, and with someone who had gang affiliations…so no one is saying that he was an angel, but the consequences have been terribly harsh, and the emphasis seems to be on punishment rather than rehabilitation. He’s in prison now, and in a sense so is his mother, and I, too, although I was never very close to him, feel a small part of myself barred and shut. 

He was barely sixteen when he first got into trouble, and it seemed to me that his emotional development was snagged right there; he got caught in a cycle that is tough to transcend. 

And if progress is two steps forward and one step back, he was gradually making progress, but this last step back was a pretty bad slip, and the court didn’t show him much sympathy. 

So the kid is in prison, and he just turned twenty in there, and it’s unbelievably depressing. 

People do endure, though. Maybe he’ll be one who gets through and be able to build a better life for himself. I pray.

But this is not the sort of thing that inspires me to write.  

I sometimes wonder what my blog is about anyway. It seems to defy description, other than a generic sharing of experiences, so I suppose the disturbing and unpleasant must be included along with the mundane and the beautiful. Together they make up a life.

We returned late last night to baby cows, as small and sweet as lambs, limbs splaying, fur still damp and downy, and a tiny green frog on the windowsill, almost iridescent. Little things hiding, yellow moon. 

Right now I am packing for a trip to Utah, where time used to live, where another sky waits.