This morning's writing

We lived at 13442 Black Hills Road, accessed by Salmon River Road and Sawtooth Way. I mention these because they are such anomalies in the San Diego world of streets. Most are Spanish for honeysuckle or dog dick. For a town that near-obsessively protects its southern border, San Diego is whooped on the language. It’s pretty until you realize that it’s all the same. Then it seems prettier because monochrome is sometimes the way to go. No real need to differentiate, to shift your vision. Only Caminito and Bernardo and Rancho Penasquitos, which was where we lived, and if you can picture a shitload of red tile roofs – minus ours, stubbornly shingle because my father was too cheap to upgrade – and scrub-brush lawns, you’ve got it.

 There is no need for cynicism. It’s just the suburbs. But as it so happens, the burbs make a particularly nice home for it. It’s a comfy home, an apt one. In the 1980s the suburbs looked slightly different only because there were different chains: Crown Books instead of Barnes & Noble, Heidi’s Frozen Yogurt rather than TCBY. Eminent domain hadn’t yet come to Paseo Montalban; the Ted Williams Parkway hadn’t rendered the destruction of so many burrito joints. Yet the loved was the loved regardless of how cookie-cutter it might appear. In kindergarten my mother took us by foot to the 7-Eleven after school, choosing carefully from ice creams stacked in frozen cases. That walk down Carmel Mountain Road a beloved eternity, hands linked, me and my brother always shunted away from roadside so that in the event of a terrible accident, my mother would get clocked first. Who said parenthood doesn’t equal sacrifice?