everything got turned around

title: same drug – artist: cold

(I’m using sentence case again these days. I may vacillate between it and my lower case ways. We’ll see. But for now, this feels right.)

I remember it was just my mom and me in the car. It was late-ish. Maybe 10:30 or 11:00 at night. Probably a weeknight. I think we’d just left a church in the mid-cities (in the Dallas/Fort Worth area). That drive home marked two things in me that night. The first was a love for the massive lights, and the particularly golden quality some of them had, over the interstates and loops and major travel-conducting arteries. That was the night I fell in love with streetlights and big cities and skylines. The second was looking out the window to see a man in his truck throwing back a beer while driving. Growing up in California, I assumed every state had an open container law. That was the night I learned Texas didn’t (at least not at that time).

Just recently, the centralized carport here has been equipped with two additional lights. While they’re quite functional in flooding the parking lot with light, I’ve come to love them because their bright golden glow reminds me of that night.

Our next door neighbors have an eastern European accent. I haven’t heard any of them converse often enough to place it more definitively than that. They’re a 30-something couple with two young children, one school age, one a toddler, and the woman’s father lives with them.

He’s a stunning grandfather with a broad smile and relaxed gait. He likes to go for walks and tinker on the piano. He has a wonderfully hearty laugh and he mostly looks after the littlest one.

It’s been a gorgeous day today and, all things considered, a warm evening. He and his daughter and her two children went out walking. They got back just as it was getting quite dark. Because of the new lights, they lingered outside while the older boy rode around on his bike as the toddler toddled around after him, the grandfather smiling and his daughter making sure the little one didn’t toddle too far.

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