Living in Bakersfield CA in the early 1990s, my neighborhood was mostly-minority, and the cops routinely patrolled via nightly helicopter flights over the streets.

They’d circle overhead, sometimes beaming spotlights onto the streets, half an hour at a time. Then they’d fly away, and merciful silence was allowed, but the coppers’ chopper would be back later, and this happened almost every night. It was like living in Vietnam during the war, only without the napalm and bombs.

This afternoon, 30 years later and here in Seattle, I’m being gifted a flashback. A single police helicopter has been doing half-mile circles over the area for the past hour and a half. Every 5-10 minutes, a cop in the chopper says something slowly over its public address speakers to all us peons below, but helicopters are loud, and most of the words are lost.

All I’ve been able to decipher is, “Stay in your home,” which is exactly what I’d planned for this afternoon anyway.

But the monotonous throbbing of the helicopter blades and repeated “Dkjhfkbjhmlk kskjfk su-fvxzc stay in your homes svmsfhdk zsdvlsd cmcx” is taking big bites out of my legendary zen-like patience, so now I’m going to jog around the block, and see if the cops open fire.

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On movies and TV, when someone’s hospitalized, all the family drops what they’re doing and comes to the sicko’s bedside. In real life, at least in my family, it’s not like that at all. Since moving back to Seattle a few years ago, there’ve been several hospitalizations of brothers and sisters and Mom, and what happens is, we text, maybe talk, and there’s lots of prayer, but visiting? “We’re kind of busy right now, but maybe we can get to the hospital by the weekend…”

I haven’t been hospitalized since I was 8 years old and got flattened by a car, so I’m not particularly complaining. Just noticing, that a real family, at least mine, ain’t at all like Terms of Endearment.

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A couple of days ago, I woke up at 4AM, and decided I wasn’t going back to sleep — one of the great joys of retirement is having no particular schedule. So I plotted a bus ride to breakfast at a place I’d heard is good. And it was good (details to come).

What must be said first is: OMG, it is utterly triumphant to wait at a bus stop before the sun comes up, but not be headed to work. Being awake and out in the world, crazy early, at my own choice, not for the man? It’s sheer liberation!

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Once a page has been published here, I’m usually done with it. Might fix a typo if I spot one, but I don’t do rewrites.

What happened in Black woman, white woman, though, and what didn’t happen, is still simmering in my head, so I’ve rewritten the end of that entry, lifting it from so-so to so-so-plus. Nothing special to read, but the lesson learned by me is big.

10/28/2024

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