Hard to be Both

I’ll be perfectly honest and tell you that few things in my day-to-day life are really story-worthy (despite the regular benedictions from that Moth podcast guy.)
But Sunday morning I found a stranger curled up next to the infant seat in the family car. It’s funny to think he was there all morning while we padded around the house cooking eggs for the boys, getting laundry going, debating how we might spend the day.

It was decided that we’d start with a hike in Forest Park. It was a pretty morning and given the growing dread that descends on every Portlander on sunny fall days (you know what they say about paybacks, the deluge is sure to come) we intended to make proverbial hay.

I distinctly remember thinking as I corralled my sweet, sweet boy and got him dressed that it was early for Portland, at least my part of town. We’re consistently amazed by the droves of sleep-eyed hipsters lined up for weekend breakfast at places like Cup & Saucer and Jam on Hawthorne when we’ve been up for hours. It’s life with a toddler, not like a conscious choice. And yet I still get a charge of feeling, well, wholesome.

So I’m feeling wholesome as I charge out to the car with the dog and an armful of coats for the coat-shunning toddler. I pop open the back hatch and the dog, excited to be included in the outing hops up. I notice his grimy wool blanket is missing. “Where’s the dog blanket?” I call to Mike who is herding the boy out the door and fumbling with keys. It’s one of those questions you lob at your partner that you don’t expect an answer to.

I step to the backseat door and fling it open, noticing the shadow of pile of crap I don’t remember being there yesterday and that’s when I see him. First the soles of his black loafers. Then his eyes springing wide above the top edge of Seeger’s blanket.

My heart pounds as I shout, involuntarily: “Who are you!”

The young man in the back seat clearly has no idea. He springs out of fetal position and bolts past me out of the car, shedding the blanket. He stumbles and mumbles. He’s nicely dressed — slacks, a button down shirt — has an English accent and reeks of alcohol. “I need my backpack,” he gasps. “I had a backpack.”

Mike, who is tall and thick and somewhat threatening, especially in the morning when his hair stands on end, is bounding off the porch and lunging at the perpetrator who is already down the driveway and tripping up the sidewalk patting his pockets. Mike follows him uttering threats and securing assurances that our young guest hasn’t stolen anything from the car. Tall and skinny, the Brit starts to sound as if he’s fighting tears. “I was drinking,” he whines over his shoulder to Mike, as if it needs clarification.

It all took maybe a minute and then we were back to bundling into the family car and continuing with the day. Mike and I look at each other and laugh. “Can you believe that just happened?”

We used the top of Thurman St. as our put-in for the park. It was a abuzz with earnest runners: droves of them all ropey muscles and flushed cheeks. I had been expecting we’d beat the crowds as we do when we show up early to those breakfast places. Instead I felt like an alien, clothed without microfibers, plodding slowly along with sniffing dog and dawdling 2-year-old.