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.