May McConkey '21
UNTITLED, KATELYN WANG '23
Blue Eggs
2.7 miles south of the UC San Diego Campus, three blocks down from the house with the farm of contraband flamingos, a 4 minute walk from the entrance to the La Jolla Shores beach, sits the L-shaped 1856 Viking Way. The red-tiled Spanish-style home spans the corner of Viking Way and an unmanned alleyway typically occupied by beachgoers passing through the neighborhood. Adjacent to the chest-high black ornamental iron gate, a plaque reads “Paul and Charlotte Hutchinson House—1931—The City of San Diego.” Guarding the plaque, a uniformly sheared Hawthorn hedge lines the front of the house. White aphids speckle the glossy surface of the dark green elliptic leaves of the plant.
Beyond the gate, a white mail slot that was once a whimsical built-in toy of the house for the five-year-old who lived there is now solely used by the mailman. The mail chute sits next to a circular doorbell. When pressed, a ring to the melody of the Westminster Chimes diffuses throughout the rooms.
On the side of the home, a Jacaranda stretches its branches out past the property line. In the spring and summer months, the tree parades its violet bloom. At the end of the bloom cycle, my mother laments the ceaseless fall of these bell-shaped flowers and the daily task of blowing them out of the driveway with her electric leaf blower. As its owner continues to neglect it, a decade-old rope wrapped around the thickest limb of the tree welds itself onto the bark.
In the backyard live the remaining two pets of the family. Gilly and Cirino, namesakes of a Saturday Night Live character and a Sicilian relative, dwell in a wooden coop with chipping indigo paint. In the daytime, they struggle down the steps and peck at the daily toss of feed. When friends visit the house, they are enthusiastic about the hens: “Do they lay eggs?” I think of their aging bodies who can produce their distinct pastel blue eggs only once in a while now. “Um, yeah. Sometimes.”
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