On the Road: L.A. Bound

Spencer and I are in the backyard. The chickens, Sunny and Shadow, are in the run and peck at the earth for worms. The scratch and cluck.

The sun sets, the sky is clear with a few clouds and the birds are busy building nests. Robins, jays, finches.

Spence is in the hot tub, awkward in his man body with a big tummy and long legs. He complains about his dance teacher who is "working his arse off."

I'm on the top step of the deck with a plate balanced on my knees. I eat a hamburger and nod with sympathy. Jazz dance is hard, I've studied it myself and the teacher he complains about used to dance with the Ailey Dancers in NY! She's tough and perfect and demanding. Poor kid.

"POP POP POPPOPPOPPOP POP"

Silence all around.

Spencer and I look at each other through the steam that rises from the water in the tub.

"Gunshots," I finally say.
"Automatic weapon," Spencer says.
"No way," I say.
"Has to be," he says. "No way that many shots came from a single shooter."
"Shit!" I say.

He nods like he agrees.

I am not hungry anymore.

Sirens come a few minutes later and then the news. A fourteen year old boy has been shot.

Mama's don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.

My thirteen year old son is safe with me and another woman's son bleeds on a sidewalk just a few blocks away. It's being called "gang related activity" even though the boy wasn't in a gang.

Life.

Life is with us and then, in a second, it is shot.

Found is out and I'm signing books at events and answering emails and the review's continue to come in. I am on my way to L.A. soon, to do an event at Deisel Books with Hope Edelman and Dinah Lenney--I cannot wait because I love Hope and she has a great plan to talk as a group about writing about family and there will be champagne and cheesecake & Dinah was my mentor on Found--but then I hear that the place where I am going to stay in L.A. is also home to gang violence. A kid was shot on the boardwalk near my hotel a few days ago.

"Don't go out at night," warns a friend who lives in El Segundo. "That part of town is not safe."

What part of town--in any town--is safe anymore?

A part of me wants to just stay home and protect what I know. I've got my disaster emergency kit all set up, for the monster quake that is supposed to come and level this part of the world. I've got my extra water and flashlights and emergency food. I'm ready. I'm ready to live.

And then another one of my friends emails that her husband has lung cancer which has metastasized to his brain. She says he is in surprising good humor and cracks jokes, "it's a good thing all this free radiation is coming from Japan."

It feels like I am one of the little gerbils, Jo's new pets, who now live in a aquarium in the kitchen. The tiny creatures, named S'mores and Oreo, have tiny hearts and they race around and around on a purple wheel as if they might die if they don't run.

It's all come to this.

What's the point? What are we doing anyway and what the hell does my book matter and what do I mean--what does it matter?? I spent years of my life--18 years of my life--writing the damn book and yes it matters. It matters. It matters.

But not really.

What matters?

Being alive, I suppose.

That's what matters.

Paying attention to being afraid.

Living past the fear.

Being careful, kind, safe.

And loving.

Loving myself. Loving my kids. Even loving all this damn fear.

Easter is coming, Jo has demanded an early egg coloring night and now two dozen colored eggs are in my refrigerator--red, yellow, blue and green. The kids plan an egg hunt.

Spring explodes around us. Life in full sized technicolor. And death too. Terrible things next to amazing things. Beauty next to horror.

We are all still here. We are all still alive. It's a miracle, isn't it?