We Can Always Go Home

It's still there.  I mean, not that I thought it wouldn't be.  But...it's still there. This is the last home my family shared some 30 years ago. My mother. My middle sister.  My baby sister. Her father.  My grandmother.  And me.  All six of us in that small 2 bedroom house owned by a man named, "Big Daddy" on the east side of town just beyond South Central, Los Angeles.  I was so happy when we moved into this house because my young and ever hopeful mind imagined we would be stable.  Finally!  No more moving from pillar to post because we couldn't make the rent.  Nuh uh...things were going to get better for us with this move.  I was too happy to invite friends over to visit because with this house I had no embarrassment about the paltry conditions of our home.  All the utilities were on.  We had a house phone (remember those) that rang all the time with calls from my friends for me. Every room was furnished. My baby sister and I even had our own beds.  Things were good!  Until they weren't. 

In the 7 months we lived at 5510 San Pablo there were some good times before things became difficult for us.  I remember coming home to the comforting aroma of red beans and rice (again) cooking on the stove.  Or the sound of fried chicken sizzling in a cast iron skillet and the smell wafting through the house causing me to ask again and again, "Time to eat, yet?"  Oh!  There was that time my friends and I snatched the sheet from under my baby sister while she slobbered away on her pillow, making her wet her pants she was so damn scared.  And that time I found $20 outside somewhere and was finally able to buy a "moo moo" from National's for my mother as her Mother's Day gift.  She cried.  I even remember the time my baby sister's father taught me how to iron a pair of pants within an inch of my life!  I still can press a pair of pants as good as any cleaners in town, too.    

But the memories that are seared in my consciousness as clear as day are much more sinister and depressing and sad that those glimpses of happy.  To be honest, during the entire 7 months we lived in that house I was mostly sad and afraid and confused and embarrassed.  Behind the securely closed and locked door and tightly shut windows covered with curtains, my adolescent mind worked overtime to make sense of the anger, intimidation, anxiety, sadness and fear that covered everything inside like a dense fog.  My mother struggled to find the motivation to actively participate in life without popping Valiums several times a day just to quiet her mind and dull the back spasms she endured.  My grandmother drowned her feelings of shame from running her answering service business at 819 Santee Street in downtown Los Angeles into the ground with can after can after can of Budweiser.  She and my mother would 'cuss each other out like they didn't even know one another during her drinking binges that seemed to happen every Friday like clockwork.  They would both awaken the next day as if nothing happened and we stepped around that tension in the house like it was a toy left behind by a child.  My baby sister's father controlled everything behind those doors with heavy hands he used to beat my mother into submission and mean and hurtful words he spewed with the full intention of crushing her spirit.  He was masterful.

Behind that door I was the parent that tended to my mother's busted lips, blackened eyes and battered and bruised limbs.  Behind that door I was the voice of reason that dressed my baby sisters, put my grandmother's car keys in my mother's hands and hurried us all out the door as my sister's father slept off his latest nasty and abusive mood.  And behind that door I was the one that tucked my sisters into bed when we returned a few hours later because my mother could not imagine her life…and ours…were worth more than the pitiful existence that was our reality in that home.  There was no time for me to be a kid behind the door of 5510 San Pablo.  And I absolutely hated that.        

We all left that house never to return in 1984 when my mother quickly succumbed to an addiction to "crack" cocaine that destroyed our fragile and dysfunctional, yet intact family within 4 short months.  My sisters and I went into foster care in separate placements that were a great distance from one another.  My baby sister's father vanished.  My mother and grandmother fed their addictions together roaming the streets of South Central and were ultimately not able to get my sisters and I out of foster care.  My baby sisters and I spent the remainder of our childhoods in foster care moving from placement to placement before exiting foster care upon our 18th birthdays.  And with all of that, 5510 San Pablo was the last home my sisters and I had as children.  

Everyone in my family struggled mightily as a result of our family circumstance.  Every.  Single.  One.  Of.  Us.  As far as I know my mother is still feeding her crack addiction 30 years later somewhere in South Central.  My grandmother suffered serious several debilitating strokes requiring total care while her mind deteriorated into dementia.  My baby sister's father died alone and very very sick from years of intravenous drug use.  And yet my sisters and I are still here today doing the best we can as adults that survived poverty, depression, drugs, domestic violence and utter chaos in our childhoods.  While my sisters still live in Los Angeles, I chose to create the life I wanted further away.  Rarely do I visit Los Angeles…for obvious reasons.  But a recent trip to Los Angeles to see about the most important person in my life forced me to go home.  

During my last day of this quick turn around trip to LA, without much thought I found myself driving towards 5510 San Pablo after 30 years.  I just needed to see it, you know?  To breathe it.  I made the block several times slowing down to take it all in as I got closer.  I was back home.  Alllll of those memories flooded my mind and my heart raced with the sheer overwhelm of it all.  Those same feelings of sadness and fear and confusion and embarrassment settled in my stomach just like when I lived in that home so many years ago.  I circled the block several times.  Slowly.  Again.  And.  Again.  Eventually, I slowed down long enough to snap a quick picture of 5510 San Pablo from the vantage point of the driver's seat of the rental car.  I pulled over and stared at the image and slowly the difficult feelings started to fade with the assurance that I am now in the driver's seat of my life.  I control what happens to me.  I choose what I allow to happen around me.  Looking at that picture affirmed for me that my sisters and I are the miracles that survived living in that home.  Indeed our lives are sometimes complicated and messy...but we are here!  Fighting to have what we want and desperately wanting to live authentically.  Using our past to propel us towards our futures.  Finding no shame in the home we came from and using our testimonies to encourage someone else…even ourselves…every now and then.   

I had had enough.  After a few drive-bys and before folks became suspicious of my circling the block staring at this house, I put the car in drive.  I took a deep cleansing breath, tossed my iPhone in the backseat, turned the radio up and drove away from that home.  I turned the corner satisfied with the journey thus far that led me to come back full circle.  I wiped the tears from my eyes and chose to dismiss the sadness that usually comes with tears and instead rejoiced for the journey thus far.  See...I was headed back to the home I have created for myself far, far, far away from the home I once knew.  And I was comforted right in that moment knowing we can always go home.  Thank GOD for that.

*Head Up.  Shoulders Back.  Face to the Sun*