On Leaving North Portland
Honest to pete, I need to stop reading Hockey God’s blog. You know Hockey God, aka Steve? My husband? Yeah, everyone is weighing in on his blog re: should the Wacky Family move or not?
You don’t see them over here packing. You don’t see them kicking pitbulls for me.
My response?
Dear NoPo Parent,
First of all, re: “But we can’t get going when the going gets tough.”
Yes, we can. See ya. And see this.
You’re not married to me (and for that, you should thank God, because really? I’m a handful) but Hockey God is married to me, and this conversation should we stay/or should we go now? has come up about 50 times since we got together 10 years ago. This is nothing new for us, talking about leaving.
Which you don’t know because you and I are not married, see? So you don’t get to weigh in here.
Portland-metro area is and has always been fifth choice for me, or sixth, after San Diego (family, great weather, Mexico close by); Lisbon, Portugal (where my husband and I fell in love); Oh, Canada (on the prairie, or East coast, hockey); Iowa (family, Amish country, boating on the lake); and Manhattan (always, always my first choice, but not my husband’s).
Has a pitbull tried to eat you lately? I’ve had it with that shit. At what point did I say, “I’m done”? Last Thursday, when a pitbull tried to nibble on me. Try saying something to me like, “Sheesh, sorry — that must have been a drag” or “I’m glad you’re OK,” or something, would you? instead of rambling about restaurants and “wrestling with questions” and yadda-yadda-blip.
I love my neighbor (not the Nekkid One, although I do love her, or the Nasty One, who I do not love at all, but another one who lives nearby). But when she showed up on my front porch last year, with a pitbull attached to her leg, I wasn’t that fucking pleased. So when I say, I love most of my neighbors and will miss them… Yes, I will. But I won’t miss the other shit. I won’t miss calling my sister and saying, “Library/community center/neighborhood is in lockdown, I can’t stop by.” My sister lives nearby and there have been numerous times we haven’t been able to navigate the twenty-odd blocks between us because the police? They’re either over in her neighborhood or they’re here in mine. And usually someone has ended up dead, or close to dead.
We are divided and at each other’s throats here, and that is the last thing I wanted. I thought we were past all that. See: Chavez Blvd. We are so not past that.
This is my life. This is my reality, not yours. Mine.
I didn’t care for it much, the evening we couldn’t come home because of the sharpshooters on the corners. I don’t like the SWAT teams circling. I don’t like the way the kids get scared when the cops are searching house-to-house. I don’t like when a Hispanic family’s house gets raided and then INS or the FBI is all, oh, sorry! Wrong family!
I don’t like how I’ve taken to yelling, “Move, bitch!” at male drivers. I don’t like that a homeless man was shot to death right down the street. (Edited to say: And worse, that no one seemed to care.)
I don’t like my nearby neighborhood schools being in fucking lock-down every time there is an “incident.” I don’t like it that Jefferson High School is in perpetual lockdown, just because PPS said so.
I don’t like that the Nekkid Neighbor asked us to walk to the library and later, I was glad that we didn’t go because a man was shot to death on the corner. Five minutes before my neighbor walked by.
I was glad she had called me, because all I could think was, maybe that was her five minutes that made the difference. What if she and her baby had been right there, right then? What if my babies and I had been with them? Would the outcome have changed? Would it have been more than one person dead? How can I know?
She was so shook up, all she could say was, “I saw his feet.” They were sticking out from under the police blanket.
My kids are going to be at home and in public schools here for about ten more minutes and then they’ll be off to college. So please you will not try to run our show. Go get your own blog and go off on there, would you? You have plenty to blog about, it sounds like.
And last of all, I don’t like the nickname “NoPo,” cuz the word po’ is colloquial for “poor.” Were you aware of that? NoPo to me has always sounded like, “No mo’ po’ people around here, boss, just us chickens.” It’s not North Portland that I’m leaving, or Northeast, where I’ve lived my entire life.
It’s NoPo.
, 
.