My mom and dad and the car they sold when she got pregnant with their first kid.
Stonestown, Parkmerced, San Francisco, circa 1960
Everything that pleases and pains
A few years ago my father set out a few boxes of my old things. In one of the boxes was a deck of cards that a friend and I found when we were in middle school. We were walking through the greenbelt that connected the various neighborhoods together in a suburb of Houston. We were probably walking to the Stop n Go to hang out with the older kids and smoke cigarettes and play video games at the pizza parlor.
There were two boys farther on in the woods throwing something at a bench. They noticed us and ran off through the trees. When we got to the bench we found a deck of cards scattered all over. A ninja star was pinning one to the back of the bench. A deck of naked porny men. My friend and I picked the cards up out of the dirt and organized them. My dad had a similar sort of deck, but it was the same woman on the back of the card in the same pose again and again and again, 52 times. This deck was 14 different men. The cards were well abused, worn, torn, some with holes, a few were burned at the edges. We happily split the deck between us. Tucking them for safe keeping in our back pockets.
This, friends, is that deck of cards. Behold!
Tonight my teenager was driving us home. She was saying how much she likes the nighttime. The rain, the darkness, the reflection of light on the windshield. Her saying that reminded me of summer nights in Houston. How warm and thick the air was. How the June bugs would collect at the beginnings of streets, just at the edges under the street light. You could sit on a curb in shorts and a tank top and not be cold. You might even be sweating. If you were smoking and you exhaled, the smoke would hang in the air, otherworldly. Continue reading “all the different nights”
Usually when we do environment work, we dig out non-native, invasive blackberry root balls which in the hot summer is not so much fun. We thought we’d plant trees this time. Continue reading “Planting”
The kids fought today which is unusual. M1 drank some of M2’s chocolate milk even though M2 had written her name on it.
“You wrote your name on it?”
“So that this wouldn’t happen.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“How could you not see it?”
M2 paced back and forth in the kitchen, twisting the cap of the chocolate off and then back on, while M1 sat on the couch, scrolling through her Tumblr on her phone.
“I don’t even want it now. You can finish it.” M2 put the milk back in the fridge.
“I didn’t drink out of the container. I put it in a glass.”
“I still don’t want it.”
But she did want it. Continue reading “Siblings”