Midnights, March: 23

I have to confess: I am writing this post on my laptop at 11:10 pm. It is impossible for me to write on my phone while I nurse at 3 am because my phone, alas, is broken. SOMEone has been CHEWING on it, and though it spends the night in a bag of rice, I doubt the screen will do more in the morning than flash feebly. 

But let’s froget about that. (I’m leaving the typo because it made me laugh.) I want to talk to you today about a SEWER.

This sewer.

Is it a sewer? Or a storm drain? Whichever it is, there was one not far from the house where I grew up in California, down the hill a little ways, right near a trail head that vanished quickly into the foothills. I wasn’t allowed to actually venture onto the trail because of the mountain lions who regularly made their presence known back then, but nobody seemed to much care if I lurked at the entrance. 

The trail wasn’t often busy, especially on rainy days, and that was when I liked best to slip down the street and off to THE DRAIN. I’d drop discreetly past the scrubby boulders and shuffle over to the rocks right beside the yawning grate. There I would crouch, troll-like, singing little songs and mucking about in the thin stream of water and shouting into the drain just to hear the echo. It was a lovely place where I could be myself without anyone watching.

“Why are you being weird?” asked NOBODY.

“You are too old to behave like a goblin,” commented NO ONE AT ALL.

And now I’ve found a drain here, in Pennsylvania. A splendid one, all grey and moody with the tall grasses there among the rocks and the tangle of trees behind. The only problem is that it finds itself right outside an apartment building, along the walking trail. It might be that I can steal a few moments on a rainy weekday when school’s in session to rekindle my old skulking ways. But I think I may have to accept that my goblin days are over.