Late Summer

I feel like late summer in a Southern California city - when all the moisture's been sucked out of you and all your summer play has been done - before you remember there's anything good about going back to school.

I feel like the paved wash that runs behind the house I grew up in - driven over all day, nothing but dried concrete, no flexibility at all to my life, grey and old and unattractive, a place to collect litter, waiting at the backs of properties forever, separated from all the action by an ugly, dark, high fence, allowed a glimpse here and there of the old places through chain links, where there are orchards and horses - also old and waiting ...

It used to serve a purpose - water flowed down it, bringing life to the plain, by-passing the properties it would have eroded, carrying its tumultuous energy away from field and home. The wash protected and nurtured. Later another way was made to carry the water - or maybe the dam made it unnecessary. So the wash became a street, full of cement almost up to its edges, but not quite, in case there should still be need of it when the January rains fall. And there was, every year, behind my house the cars fairly swam down the sudden river that appeared when the California rain that "never rains, it pours" came pouring down for one entire day. Then the wash was a wash again, not just dried up old Peck Rd.

But at the end of summer, when we were all used up with our summer beach trips and church camp and family vacations, Peck Rd. was just a dumping ground for summer's cast-offs. There were no more activities at the church that bordered it for a space. The Mayflower Market held no more mystery for us as we'd visited it daily for 2 months. Besides we were out of allowance. The hot, dry, August sun beat down on its unrelieved greyness, intensified between the high fences, drying every dream to stillness. No friends came down that way that month if they could possibly get their mothers to drive them. The bikes lay unused around the back yard while we were at a friend's pool. All the fun was somewhere else.

Like me. All my life has passed out into other places. Nothing happens here. No music, no dancing, so sewing pretty things .... I am good for one thing and one thing only - money. I must take myself away from the center of my life - my home I have tried to make for this family, but which I've never had time to truly attend to - and go out into the hard world, where everything is as grey and as inflexible and as friendless as Peck Rd. in late summer.

Nothing but steam rollers pass over me now. I wait here to be used, by people or nature, and nothing comes here but trash. If there is hope it is only for the death of old leaves, the Fall, because then the Santa Anas will blow down the leaves and huge palm branches, and at least that howling music will fill my canyon of hopelessness. Then sometimes November brings rain, and sometimes the children have a day off and skate down my straight surface and I hear their precious laughter once again. I will see the foothills snow capped in December, until the January rains fill me up with would-be floods running down to the San Gabriel River and Arrow Highway, where the dead tumbleweeds will be carried on its crest, over the white flint rocks that lie waiting to be rolled. The rains come and wash away the litter. They wash away the dead leaves. They leave me clean again, ready for the spring in February, when camellia bushes near the high fences will bloom and drop their petals to be carried here by a February rain.

But it's a long, long day until that. For now the only activities to look forward to are the September fires, when people will gather all around and look up my clear view to see which foothill is burning and how much. Have the fire trucks made it there yet? Are there any homes threatened? And the smell of the smoke will be carried down my straight, unobstructed way and frighten a young girl in the house at the corner of the church property so she can't sleep, or dreams of fires trapping her.

I am a used up, old, paved over, unwanted, neglected, dried up wash. The only time I'm needed is in a crisis, and then - oh ho! - I'd better be clear! No one wants me for myself, a nurturer and an artist. My time is almost past. How will I remain in the future? For I am not made of concrete, am not fixed in this place. I am a human woman with a will and a way and feet to carry me the way I will. I have no cement stamina for sticking in hard places without a clear motive. I will one day up and leave.

And then what?

HEAR THE WORD OF THE LORD:

Psalm 95

O come let us sing for joy to the Lord;

Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.

Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving;

Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.

For the Lord is a great God,

And a great King above all gods,

In whose hand are the depths of the earth;

The peaks of the mountains are His also.

The sea is His, for it was He who made it;

And His hands formed the dry land.

Come, let us worship and bow down;

Let us kneel before the Lord our maker.

For He is our God,

And we are the people of His pasture,

And the sheep of His hand.

Today if you would hear His voice,

DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS, AS AT MERIBAH,

As in the day of Massah in the wilderness;

"When your fathers tested Me,

They tried Me, though they had seen my work.

For forty years I loathed that generation,

And said they are a people who err in their heart.

And they do not know My ways.

Therefore I swore in My anger,

Truly they shall not enter into My rest."