Photograph by Matthew Suárez

I feel most like myself when I’m just out walking, either alone or with my favorite companion — who doesn’t happen to be my mother.

The raccoon was homeless and pregnant and wanted to live under my house. But since it’s really my landlord’s house, I couldn’t allow her to keep scratching and chewing her way through the splintering wood. Regretful but resolute, I stacked some bricks up against the spot where she’d been making steady progress — and hoped the whole thing was over.

Photograph by Matthew Suárez

It wasn’t. Although she couldn’t move the bricks, she wasn’t about to stop trying. She kept coming back for another whack at them. When I could bear it no longer, I worked out a plan and silently proposed it to her. I placed some food a little ways from the house, and hoped she’d understand that if she agreed to find somewhere else to sleep during the day, I would gladly provide a breakfast of raw eggs and dried cat food for her at sundown. She understood.

This went on for about two and half months. As we kept company, we got to know each other. I started looking forward to her visits under the porchlight. It was so cool the way she swept up the cat food with her long, delicate fingers, bringing each piece to her mouth in such a ladylike fashion. She never dropped a crumb. And when she broke an egg on my walkway, she licked the cement clean. After she was finished eating, she headed over to the big bowl of water I always left for her and cleaned herself up. It was a complicated ritual. My cat is plenty persnickety, but even she would never go to that much bother.

Then, one chilly night in early December, my raccoon showed up with three little ones. Their arrival broke my heart, because I knew the time had come to stop the feedings. Mom had to start teaching her offspring what she knew about foraging. She seemed to realize it, too, or at least, she got the message the following night, when there was no breakfast waiting. All four vanished in a twinkling.

Where did they go? Have they stayed in the area? Are they managing to dodge the merciless traffic around here? Or are they being slaughtered one by one on the highway?

I know this much: Mama Raccoon was intrepid, a quality I admire. And I missed her, almost the way I would miss my cat Pumpernickel if she were to disappear. But then, everything in Hillcrest is fleeting, almost to the point of seeming illusory. I’ve been “camping” here for the past twelve years, haunted by the fact that I have absolutely no security beyond an unmistakably false sense of it, brought on by a glass of cheap wine and an old record on the turntable.

Like most backyard granny cottages in this area, the one I rent is very old. You could just about knock it down with a shovel, which means that sooner or later, someone will. I’m surprised and grateful each time I wake up hearing a chirping bird instead of a thundering bulldozer. Glory be! Another day vouchsafed for taking picturesque walks through the neighboring neighborhoods of University Heights, Mission Hills, or North Park. Or through the lush ravines of Hillcrest itself, or all the way to Old Town or Kensington—not to mention Balboa Park.

Georgeanne Hotchkiss won first place in the Reader’s Neighborhood Writing Contest.

Photograph by Matthew Suárez

But while these perambulations usually raise my spirits, there’s a danger in them: when you’ve been taking those walks long enough that you get to know and love the territory: you risk running into the black dog. Not a literal bowser; Winston Churchill’s black dog: depression. That can hound you for weeks. Whenever I discover a fresh patch of demolition, I feel almost physically sick. Charming old houses and apartment buildings, shops and places of business imbued with history and character — what are their chances for preservation anymore? No matter how salvageable they may be, they’re toppling like heads during the French Revolution. The citizens must be served. The towering, capacious monstrosities that replace them will soon monopolize the view in every direction, and we all know it isn’t going to stop.

Animals in the ravines have always sensed the threat — hence their desperation. As there get to be more of and more of us taking up more and more of what used to be their space, they keep pouring into “our” territory to scratch out a living. But concrete and steel can’t be dug into like the rotting wood of my home’s foundation. Cubbyholes for wildlife, as well as for low-income people, are at a premium these days. So, whenever I see possums, skunks, coons, and sometimes even foxes slinking through the alleys after dark, I find myself thinking more about what is common between us than what is different. They’re nervous. Running scared. So am I. I know that living on the edge isn’t the same thing as falling off. That’s an important point to remember, whether you have any faith in tomorrow or not.

Still, if my landlord were to sell this property — and he talks about it — where on earth would I live? Or at least, where in San Diego? With wretched hovels like mine becoming scarcer by the day, I’d be up a creek without a boat, never mind the paddle. I live on Social Security and my dwindling savings account; I can’t afford to rent an apartment in an up-to-date building where water bugs don’t poke their ugly noses out from the cupboards, and where the kitchen floor doesn’t sag under the weight of the refrigerator.

Speaking of refrigerators: I actually unplugged my antiquated one a few months ago, just to see how SDG&E would react. They reacted sportingly. My next bill was almost half the usual, so I left that plug dangling! All I had to do was get used to putting Kroger’s powdered creamer in my coffee instead of milk. As for chilled salads and yogurt, I just walk over to Ralph’s a few blocks away and pick up what I need. Ralph’s is great about putting half-price stickers on ready-made salads, which even contain little packets of dressing. And if I don’t finish a whole yogurt in one sitting, it can perch by the window screen overnight and still be cold for breakfast.

Seriously, who really needs a refrigerator? Covered wagons didn’t have them, and people still came west. Now I’m the only one on the block who laughs when we have a power failure. Not one thing stored in my freezer is going to be wasted, because apples, vanilla wafers, and tortilla chips don’t melt.

All that aside, though — the beautiful walks and the relatively cheap digs — my reason for coming to Hillcrest in the first place was my aging mother. She’d already been renting a tiny studio here for nearly twenty years when I decided to leave Oceanside and look for any affordable place I could find in her neighborhood. There was never any thought of our living together; Mama adores her privacy as much as I do mine, and her small room is still perfect for her. Now that she can barely walk, she braces herself against the sink or the walls while moving about. There are dangers in living alone at her age, but she is extremely lucky to have two close neighbors, Russ and Ken, who really seem to care about her. I believe they would hear — and respond to — a cry of distress if she let one fly. Plus, she wears a medical alert pendant. But as a rule, I’m her first recourse whenever help is needed. Even if she happens to call in the middle of the night, it takes me only a few minutes to sprint over there — and you can believe I do sprint, what with all the two-legged vermin prowling the streets. Fortunately, my mother’s calls for help are rare, but I always sleep in my clothes just in case, like a firefighter expecting to slide down the pole.

I don’t have any wheels, and Mama has only the two on her wheelchair, but it’s okay. Mama weighs only eighty-seven pounds, so I can easily trundle her over to her dermatologist’s office six blocks away. Her dentist? Only two blocks. That kind of convenience is one of Hillcrest’s finest features. Because it’s a medical beehive swarming with specialists, I’m never at a loss for what to do about my mom’s myriad afflictions. Anything from skin cancer to pyorrhea gets dealt with right away.

The rickety little wheel­chair is also ideal for recreational outings. Mama loves browsing in thrift stores, the way some women like to fawn over jewelry and purses at Nordstrom. So when the mood strikes her, I roll her over to Father Joe’s on University Avenue. The only difficult part is avoiding certain sad situations along the way — things I’d rather Mama didn’t have to see. Sometimes we inadvertently end up on sidewalks that are buried in garbage. More often than not, there are half-clothed human beings wallowing in this defilement. Some of them are screaming, flailing their arms and legs, or picking relentlessly at suppurating wounds. It’s hard to believe that this kind of squalor has become commonplace in the sort of urban playground that Hillcrest has become. Just a stone’s throw away, there are noisy, crowded bars and popular outdoor restaurants. The close proximity to laughter and frivolity only deepens the shock.

Naturally, my confused Mama never knows how to take this.

“My God, what’s wrong with this world?” she asked me just last week. “How come nobody helps these poor hobos?”

Hobos. To hear her talk, you’d think that every destitute person in town had just jumped from the cattle car of a moving train. But she means well in her struggle to understand the grotesque side of the carnival.

I always give her the same lame answer. “Sometimes they do get help, Mama. The police have an outreach program, and I’ve seen the locals offering food and blankets.”

“The locals? Who are the locals? Oh, watch out. There’s a pile of dog poop on the sidewalk. Right ahead of us.”

“That’s not dog poop, Mama,” I assured her.

“Well, what is it, then?”

“Guess! Anyway, I see it. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried. But I still say it looks like dog poop.”

“Say what you will.”

Nobody, not even my opinionated mother, can educate me on the subject of fecal matter. I worked for too many years in North County nursing homes not to know doggie doo from the human sort. Prior to that job, I’d found real camaraderie and good times in a couple of Oceanside massage parlors. I loved being a masseuse, so I dragged that gig out for over a decade. Then my age began to show in subtle ways — apart from arthritic hands and an aching back. I realized what was happening to my face, neck, and svelte figure when customers started asking me if they could choose a younger girl. A question like that bodes ill in a massage parlor. When I didn’t feel pretty anymore, I knew the time had come to leave my fun job behind.

So it was goodbye to loud rock music, vibrating waterbeds, spinning disco balls, and mirrored ceilings. I traded in my long glittery dresses and high heels for dull scrubs and sturdy (but staid) white nursing shoes.

It was a rough transition, and yet strangely enough, both types of employment helped me to face what’s on my plate today. My move to Hillcrest brought little or no culture shock. The lively strip I found on University Avenue seemed practically the same as Oceanside’s main drag, where those long-gone massage parlors used to be. Of course, the fluttering frenzy of rainbow flags altered the picture somewhat, but not significantly. I mean, partying is partying, right? Just like a hangover is a hangover, and a score is a score — or not. It’s all good, as they say. And working with the frail elderly for so many years—well, that definitely prepared me for taking care of Mama. While we were moving on towards Father Joe’s, I patted the top of her curly white head and smiled. Things were going okay for us. We had no complaints — at least, not today. But Father Joe’s turned out to be overcrowded with shoppers, so I pushed the wheelchair to Balboa Park. There, Mama could admire the rose garden and chuckle over the feisty crows and squirrels. Every time she sees a squirrel these days, she asks me how mine is doing, forgetting that my nocturnal visitor was a raccoon. As usual, I have to give her the whole story all over again — how the raccoon had taken her babies away so they could learn to survive on their own. Of course, Mama was intrigued by the recap, because she thinks everything I say to her is breaking news.

Then, while we were heading back home via Park Boulevard, she spotted something on the grass that really excited her. It was a large bag of women’s clothing, apparently left for anyone who felt like digging into it. The used articles were clean and neatly folded, so I shared her delight in rummaging through them. Treasure troves like that are always a terrific find.

Inveterate walker that I am, I snatched up a gently worn pair of Nikes for which I had immediate need. Mom pulled out a straw hat decorated with gaudy plastic flowers. Almost viciously, she started ripping the flowers off the hatband, saying, “I’ll take these over to my neighbors so they can make corsages.”

“Are you talking about Russ and Ken? What would they want with corsages?”

“They can give ‘em to their girlfriends for Christmas.”

I laughed. “Mama, Russ and Ken don’t have girlfriends. They’re married.”

“Well, then, they can give ‘em to their wives.”

“No, I mean they’re married to each other. Russ and Ken are gay. Surely you’ve known that for a long time.”

She stared at me incredulously. “I most certainly don’t know it.”

“Well, it’s true. This has been a gay neighborhood for years and years. I guess you’ve forgotten that, but some people even call it the gayborhood.”

“The what?”

“The gayborhood. Get it?”

“Stop talking nonsense. I don’t like it.” Tossing the hat and the mutilated flowers back into the bag, she mumbled, “Take me home, Georgeanne. I’m tired.”

I complied—gladly. I was starting to feel pretty worn out myself.

Sometimes I find myself wondering if Mama remembers anything at all about the past. Is there, in some locked chamber of her mind, some vague recollection of the gay son she once had? She kept no photographs of Mark that I know of, nor does she ever mention him. But is it possible that he shows up in her dreams from time to time? And what about all her years of debilitating alcoholism and the messy divorce from my dad? Has any of that stuck? I doubt it. All while my brother and I were growing up, she appeared to be lost in a fog, and today, she relates only tentatively to what’s directly in front of her. Perhaps her permanent vacation from reality is for the best.

My father, far more alert to everything, was always spewing running commentaries on life as he saw it. I’ll never forget a particularly stinging remark he made one time when my brother and I were young adults. He’d been grousing about the various setbacks in his life — this, that, and the other — when he finally concluded with, “I just don’t know why everything had to go sour. Now I’ve got a daughter working in a massage parlor, and my son’s a homo.”

Nice going, Daddy.

I’ve always believed that if Mark had felt more accepted by our dad, he never would have committed suicide. I could be mistaken about that, but I don’t think so. The first time I ever saw the Pride Parade in Hillcrest, there was a man walking all by himself amid the steady progression of floats and marching bands. He was an older guy with a big smile on his face, and he was holding up a sign that said, “I LOVE MY GAY SON.” Reading those words, I burst into tears and struggled to run away, but I was blocked by the cheering throng. It was all so overwhelming that I almost screamed with grief and rage. If only my dad could have borrowed a leaf from that man’s book.

But you know, we all have our own book. There were simply no chapters on tolerance and understanding in my dad’s, and I don’t condemn him for those missing chapters — or at least, I try not to. Because his ignorance wasn’t entirely his fault. He was just lugging around the flawed volume that he’d been handed as a kid.

Like Mark, my dad is gone now. So it’s just Mama and me, hanging on by a thread in a place that seems far away even when you’re there. Oh, we’ve got a few relatives scattered about the country, but I certainly wouldn’t know any of them if I saw them. They probably wouldn’t recognize me, either, what with my lived-in face and some of the ratty outfits I wear. I feel lucky that Hillcrest isn’t one of those buttoned-up burgs where you have to worry about people sizing you up! Anything goes in the gayborhood — purple hair, lacy tutus, outrageous tattoos — whatever you believe is you. Who around here is going to criticize any of us for being ourselves?

Personally, I feel most like myself when I’m just out walking, either alone or with my favorite companion — who doesn’t happen to be my mother. The two of us are always searching for the Hillcrest of the early 1900s, because that’s the era that really stirs my imagination. There is a calm allure about antique Hillcrest — the parts of it that remain, anyway. You might like to know that on the southwest corner of Essex and Vermont, there’s still a metal horse ring embedded in the curb. The iceman used to tie up his wagon there while making deliveries. I step on that ring for good luck whenever I pass it.

But I’ll need a lot more than luck to face the unknown that I know is coming. I’ll need hope. That’s why I’m glad I met Mama Raccoon.

Emily Dickinson wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” Well, for me, hope is the thing with fur and a ringed tail. So I’ll just follow her.