Lot

Lot (2019) by Bryan Washington

Genre: Short stories that weave together an image of community within the parts of a city that aren’t given their fair share but use the way they’ve been pushed together to form the city’s true identity.

Recommended For: Anyone who needs or wants to slow down and read for the sake of wanting to go towards real people and places instead of using books and media to escape.

Buy here or check out at your local library. (Don’t go to the Jeff Bezos website).

You don’t want to be someone who only cares about your family. That’s how we get inequality. It’s not anyone’s fault they are not in your family. You can’t only care about the outcomes of people you love. If you have a child, you can take on a pretty beautiful responsibility. It’s up to you to model to them the understand that there are more people out there than just “us,” and sure, we are a unit, but collectively we will look out for others together.

But on the other end of that thought is the notion of your child being justifiably scared or in real danger. Then you can only think about them. You can try to think about others, but that only makes your stomach hurt, and others’ problems fade in and out like a poorly placed antenna.

—

My son is having surgery very soon. He’ll have just turned eight months. He’s going to be fine. The doctors have been planning for this and fully assure us it will go smoothly, but a baby has to wait until a certain age until it’s safe to put them under.

And that’s where you start to get lightheaded as a parent. In this little guy’s short life, it was unsafe for him to receive anesthesia just a month and a half ago. And now, it is supposedly safe. But it feels wrong to make this kid who has only ever been a terrible sleeper go to sleep this way. He never gave anyone permission to do this. He doesn’t understand. He won’t know where he is when he wakes up. And none of this even touches on the fact that they are going to cut him open.

Let me tell you something about my son while understanding that there isn’t a baby anywhere for whom I’d want to have to go through surgery. His default expression is a smile, and when he wants to acknowledge you, he just makes the smile even bigger. He stops strangers in their tracks, makes them lose their train of thought. He might be mad at mom or dad for whatever reason a baby is mad at their mom or dad, but he’ll never fail to give a stranger a big smile and rob them of their cynicism for at least that half of that day.

I don’t want this silly little monster man to be scared. I don’t want to be scared.

—

A special thing about Lot is that you could read one of the stories and cry or you could just smile. And maybe that depends on who you are, but maybe it depends on how it hits you in that moment.

The scenes take place in Houston in a neighborhood where getting by financially is as realistic a success story as you’re going to get, if that were to be how you measured success stories. One of the anchoring characters comes from a mixed-race household. He’s figuring out that he’s attracted to boys in so much as he’s capable of figuring that out in his environment and at his age.

The book is beautiful because it simultaneously shows that an entire community can hold itself together because it’s the only way for it to continue to function and that the community itself can be harsh and that one or two kind voices can carry your soul far enough to become something happy or self-actualized.

—

I’ve never really been all that sure about the idea of confronting fear. Accepting it maybe. Preparing for what must be faced. But looking away isn’t as bad as it sounds.

We have to do what we have to do. And it’s not so much that others have it worse (they do). It’s that we are not alone. Not in our own struggle and not in the concept of struggle. I feel better knowing that we’ve got a lot of fights left to fight and that he’s raised by a mother who’s going to re-show him the difference between right and wrong every day.

A month or so ago, I wrote on a piece of paper something I said I wanted to print and put in our kitchen.

“Dad, Mom, and Ray will always try to:

-Reuse, repair, recycle, share, and borrow

-Waste less food and use leftovers

-Collect friends and experiences, not just storage on our phones

-Demand that businesses respect people and the planet.”

—

3 More Things You Can Read Today:

-This Texas Band Says It Influenced a New Era of Country. It Still Sounds Unique

-J. D. Vance’s Contemptuous Conversion Memoir

-Pop albums are drowning in 'narrative.' What happens when we go in cold?