Home.

I have lived at this address for 13 years. Three of it were spent in a cramped teeny tiny brick house, that now sits rejected behind my new house.

It's name is bricky. In that home my daughter was born. Sometimes, I walk into it, leap over the boxes of Christmas decorations and try and remember how we fit inside of it.
But we did.

I swore to my then husband, that I would only live in it for one year.

One year turned into three and when my new home was nearly done, we crept inside of it with flashlights. I would oooh and ahhhh over the cabinets that I had picked out and my sunk in delicious bathtub.

In this home my daughter took her first steps, my son thought he was superman, leapt off of the swing set onto our trampoline.

He missed.

His broken arm and leg were a testament to that.

This home saw a divorce, which if it can be said, was a very nice and friendly one.

This home saw me go from a Domestic Goddess (SAHM) to a single mom who worked in the day and schooled in the night.

This home has seen me succeed and fail at this.

To my left is my neighbor. She has been here longer then I have. She is a very good neighbor to me. She has put my dogs back in when they get out, she has accepted packages for me when I was working too late.
She is a part of my neighborhood. An essential additive to the mix. She knows everyone IN my neighborhood.

My neighborhood is what I affectionately call the Ghetto. And thanks to my last boyfriend, I know entirely too much of what happens when all good people go to sleep at night.

To the left of my home are my Mexicans. They are never the same family, they cycle out from year to year and a new family moves in.
Regardless, they are always a Mexican one.

This is the reason that I love Mexican music. It automatically makes me feel like I am home.

This home has also seen the joy of Jordan inside of it, and the loss of him leaving.
It has seen me laugh with him, exclaim with joy AT him and make up songs to go with every routine that I had set in place FOR him.

It has also seen me weep at the loss of him in my life, and the strength that I found to move on with it.

Everyone in my neighborhood knows who I am. I am The Teacher. This is what they call me. This is what the refer to me as. And thanks, in part, to my ex-boyfriend, and to be perfectly blunt. Nobody fucks with me.

This morning as I wrote my blog. Sirens sounded far off in the distance.

Emma was asleep right next to me on the couch, her hair glinted in the sun that just peeked into my window.

She smiled in her sleep and opened her eyes.

Hearing the sirens she murmured "There's our rooster"

I paused in my tapping on the keyboard and laughed outloud.

"The sirens wake us up instead of roosters?"

"Mmmhmmm" she smiled.

"Oh honey. You know there are roosters right next door! And goats." (Once there was a cow)

When I was taking care of Jorden, People from the 'street'  would come by and exclaim at how wonderful he looked. They would ask after my family and offer any help to me that was needed.

They would thank me for taking care of him, and I always allowed them to hold him. He used to look at me like they were crazy. He would raise his arms for me and yell "Mama!"

After he was gone, my neighbor came to me with worried eyes. I know she wanted to talk about it. I know she knew where he was and what was happening.

I just shook my head and said "I can't. I don't want to hear anything...ever."

"Im sorry Laurie." she said and walked away.

Time has passed and laughter has returned to my lips and my heart. I know that everything, both good and bad, comes with a reason. Every person that we meet and accept into our lives, has come into it to change it in some way.

A pathway that is entirely too hard to see, until the stage has been set in its entirety.

I wake every morning with a smile on my lips. Laughter infuses my home at all times. I am in a good place.

This evening I decided that I had to buck up and do boy stuff. Like weed eating and such. I didn't want too. I hate it. With every fiber in my vagina I hate it.

I stood in the front yard with my grey sweatpants, star wars shirt and glitter boots on. I started the weed eater up cursing between my breath.

I love yard work, okay? Like flowers and shit. Making things pretty....that's what I'm good at.

I stopped the machine and yelled "I HATE THIS SHIT!" I screamed it. My hate scream echoed across the entire ghetto.

Lotsa people were out.

Lotsa people stared, but only for a moment.

I looked at my neighbor. "Why do I have to do this?"

She laughed "I don't know why you are."

"Someone has too. And I have no boybeast."

She came over to the fence and leaned against it. With her came a woman. One who I recognized. She reached her hand out to me and I shook it. She held it in her own "How are you Laurie? You look real good."

"Thank you." I said. Staring into her eyes. It was hard not to follow the trail of tears that were tattooed on her face.

But I did not.

You have to lean in close to hear her. He throat, I heard, was damaged in a choking in one of her prison stints. She wore a Hurley shirt with a hood pulled over her head.

She came around the fence and took the weedeater out of my hands. "Oh! No, you do not have to do that!" I exclaimed as she started it up.

"You stand there. Ill knock this out."

And she did. I caught up with the neighborhood gossip with Liz, and checked out the renovated house next door. One man showed me his bike that he had put a motor on and Liz offered to take Karma out for a walk every now and again when she seems bored or lonely.

When the woman was done weeding my entire front yard, she curled up my extension cord and handed it to me. "You don't need to be doing this stuff. I can do it for you."

"Oh no. I really appreciate it but..."

She took my hand "You are a friend to us. You remember that. We take care of our friends, best we can. You aint got a man, and I can do this shit better. You need me, you holler. And that's all." And she walked out of my yard.

When I came into my home I was smiling. "Who was that woman?" Emma asked. "Did she just do our yard for you?"

"Yes."

"That was nice."

"Yes."

"See? People judge others for the way they look. Or how they live. I bet there are rich fancy people that would judge us...and were fabulous."

"Yep."

"She had tattoos on her face huh. Does that mean she killed people?"

"Probably"

"Well...everyone deserves a second chance...or a third...." And she laughed.