OAKLAND -- It had been years since I'd been to the house where I grew up.
But here I was, on the very concrete where we played football and the 45 bus stop was touchdown. Across the street from the loquat tree we ate from 'til our stomachs hurt. Up the block from where a neighborhood teen was so high, rumors have it, he shot and killed his friend in a fit of paranoia.It is always surreal coming back to my neighborhood in deep east Oakland and transporting to yesteryear. There usually isn't enough time in a busy schedule to remember the caring neighbors, to relive the triumphs and traumas that shaped our lives, to sort through the buried emotions.