Member-only story
Hometown Visitor — Re-entry
My greatest love is more than a person. Flesh bag of bones. It is earth, pavement, sunlight reflecting on an urban lake, the way some exalt her, some slight her. She is my hometown. Oakland California is home to all. She loves us all equally. She nurtures us like no other town can. She loves the brash. She adores the befuddled. She shields the shy. Cheers for the defiant, at odds with BIG. Big government. Big tech. Big bosses. Big bank accounts. Big pride. She accepts us all.
Born into her. My first home. Knowing nothing else. A babe. Eyes wide in an electric world. Pacified by the warm summer sunshine. Sheltered in a shroud of oaks and pines on foggy winter mornings. Breathe with the mighty urban forests up in them hills y’all. Quirk is real. Oakland would be my identity whether I wanted it or not.
Randoms espouse battery acid bile my city spews. A bad place. Duck! Daggers speed through air piercing the innocents at alarming frequency. The streets brim with violence. Where?
Those days are decades buried in her algae and oil slicked waterfront. A presidential yacht berthed here for the public. My city is ours. As long as you also care for her. Show her your love in return.
A vivid young life memory. Snaking into the hilly canyons on home, a giant rainbow painted on the flank of a home perched alongside California…
