A Trip To Echo Glen

Last night was a gorgeous warm sunny Saturday night.  Lea and I went to Echo Glen for an AA meeting.  Things have changed out there.  What used to be an open corridor is now a nice enclosed visitor staging area with cushioned chairs.  The “lodges” used to have huge open useless fireplaces in the middle of an “H” shaped central area with rooms/cells on the arms of the H.  The fireplaces are gone now and H has been expanded to look more like a pregnant H with a conference room on across from the entrance.  It looked a lot more functional than how it used to be.

The AA meeting had also changed.  On the last Saturday of the month it is now a speaker meeting.  There was supposed to be two speakers last night, but one of them did not show up.  The other speaker had a story very close to mine for a few years after high school.   Our stories diverged then. He got sober at 24 and had 29 years of sobriety.  I have 89 days.

I am not that big a fan of speaker meetings in the first place.  Foisting them off on young teenage delinquents whose primary offense was lacking functional adults in their lives and being a bit ADD seemed more like inflicting punishment on them instead of sharing some love with them.  Instead of having a sober adult listen to them, there were once again being told what “you need to…”  I don’t have any idea what will actually work best for the kids.  I do know I like and want a more interactive environment than some old guy telling war stories and “you need to…” to incarcerated children.  On the other hand, the people that changed the meeting format were showing up every week and I am not.

Lea and I did stick around to talk with a boy and a girl away from the group at a round dining table.  The girl’s mom died at 8.  Lea’s mom died when she was 11.  They definitely shared a connection.  The girl asked three times if we were (read Lea was) coming back next week.  Maybe we will.  Volunteers need a background check to come out on a regular basis.  I have been cleared.  Lea might want to take care of that outstanding arrest warrant before going much further!  We will go again soon—just not to the lecture, err, speaker meeting.

We got out there a few minutes early and parked by the a roadside Rainier cherry stand to drink a soda and enjoy the sunshine.  Probably would have bought some cherries if they previous shopper had not been quite so OCD in having to touch at least 35 of the 50 cherry cartons displayed on a table under an awning.  That was weird & creepy in a killed our appetite for cherries kind of way.  To her credit, she did eventually buy a carton of cherries.

I am grateful for long warm evenings, a juvenile prison that provides rehabilitation, Echo Glen, Youtube music videos, a car that runs great and the coming week of warm weather.