Monday Morning Beach Report: a tall ship, clouds, and beach glass

San Salvador leaves the harbor

She nears the mouth of the harbor--and in black and white below so you can see the moon in the morning sky.

And she's out to sea.

I drove north a mile or two, hoping to catch a glimpse with the sails unfurled, but she was already a mere shadow in the fog, far from shore.

Nice clouds, though. 

And a ton of beach glass. All colors, including a rare piece of red and a large chunk from the neck of a bottle.

And now, I have a ton of paperwork to tend to so I can re-fi my house. I have a short story to finish editing, and an essay to send out a few more places, and another essay to put the finishing touches on, and an essay I want to write with a September 30 submission deadline. Wish me luck. And good luck to you with your day. Remember to stand up and stretch, okay?

P.S. Thanks for the love and kind words re my mom's birthday. Last night's party was beautiful. We toasted her. And my friend Carol blew out the candles on her cake via Skype (with a little help from us.)

Happy Birthday, Mom.

If the dead can still get mail, if their things can fall out of the closet onto your toes, if they can visit you in dreams, if you can hear their voices inside your head, you can wish them happy birthday. Happy Birthday, Mom. 

Last year's birthday breakfast cupcake.

Last year's birthday party for my mom and my dear friend Carol

Birthday, 2012 just a few weeks after my mom moved in with me.

I'm not quite sure, but this may have been the last birthday she celebrated with her beloved twin sister Millie.

We very rarely know which birthday will be the last. So let's love the cake, and the guests, and the singing. Let's love the love that comes to us on our own birthdays and those of the people we love, be it in the form of gifts or people traveling from afar to share the day. Taste the sweetness. Feel the warmth from the candles. Soak up the glow. Reflect it back.

In a short while, I'm off to celebrate my friend Carol's birthday. She will be there via Skype while a half dozen of us party in person. We will eat and make merry, and celebrate the living and the dead.

This Earthly Life

I went to a party last night--a birthday party for the 87-year-old father of a dear friend. We gathered on a patio in the setting sun with frogs croaking in a creek down the hill. Next door in a grassy pasture, a deer grazed, its back to us, oblivious of the humans devouring cheese and conversation.

It was a small group--a dozen people, some of whom I've know since I moved to California in the 70s. Some I'm getting to know better and better each occasion I spend time with them. Others I'd met at a party or a dinner here or there over the years, and there was a couple I don't recall ever meeting before. It was one of those evenings where the light cast all of us in a glow and each morsel of cheese, each piece of fruit, each swallow of wine seemed more perfect than the last.

I frequently feel awkward in social gatherings. I sometimes drink too much or refuse to make eye contact or conversation with anyone who is not a trusted friend. I can't remember names and write off anyone I'm meeting for the first time while monopolizing the people I already know, following them around like a insecure rescue dog.

I don't know why exactly, but last night felt different. As if we were all there for a reason, intertwined whether we really knew each other or not, as if the ghosts of beloved departed ones were whispering in our ears, telling us how lucky we were to be at this earthly gathering in the company of one another's warm bodies, enjoying the creatures and fruits of this earthly life.

Pumpkin Custard

apple crisp, pumpkin pies, and pumpkin custard

I don't know how it started. Maybe once upon a time I made twice the amount of pie filling that I needed and because I didn't want to waste it, I had to do something with it. Hence, the tradition of pumpkin custard the night before Thanksgiving. The daughters and I are sitting on the couch with the Laker game on TV, each of us double-teaming with an additional device in our laps. C is reading about how to carve a turkey, M is playing some kind of game. We're eating pumpkin custard and talking about Giving Tuesday--which I have to admit I don't really know much about. Sometimes I get so lost in the day to day of life here in Pillville that I completely miss something that everyone else seems to have a working knowledge of.

Our dinner tomorrow will be our smallest Thanksgiving gathering ever. We'll all sit at one table, and mostly there will be one conversation going on, I'm guessing. That seems nice. I like small gatherings, as a rule. No pressure to mingle or figure out how to exit one conversation for another.
So, yeah, small seems good. My energy feels a little low. I forgot to put the brown sugar in the pumpkin pie filling and had to take them out of oven. C carefully stirred in the sugar and I think the pies are fine.

I had two mini-parties for my birthday. I liked that a lot too. The first one involved champagne and chocolate cake, the second a homemade cheese log and wine.

Whether your gathering is large or small, I hope the food and the company at your table are delightful.

HI from Kauai and Fun Facts

view from the back door of the birthday house

A flock of chickens lives under the house.

This morning it rained and the ocean looked just like a Winslow Homer painting.

It's hot. Hotter than Maui. Hotter than the Big Island, but the breeze here provides relief.

It's incredibly fun to whisper in the dark with a friend before giving in to sleep.

Eating with a full contingent of smart friends is beyond pleasant.

Word games amuse me greatly--even when I'm stumped.

There's nothing like a compelling personal story told around the table in the fading evening light.

There are no singing frogs here like there were in Hilo, but the ocean waves make their own song.

The back porch is shady and just large enough for T'ai Chi Chih and one-person yoga.

This is the closest I've ever been to the ocean while in a house.

There's great Indian food here.

I really love papayas.

I still get excited whenever I see a rainbow.

And I promise to avoid being arrested.

So......A Woman Walks into a Bar

"It's their birthday," the woman said, righting herself after stumbling through the restaurant's patio gate. The waitress greeted her and the three nearly identical golden retrievers without any fanfare. As if triplet birthday dogs dined on the patio every day. "I wouldn't be opposed to a doggy birthday treat," the woman said, and then ordered herself a house Chardonnay. The wine appeared almost instantaneously, and a minute later the waitress brought a dish of some sort of grilled meat skewered with birthday candles. I expected singing, but the woman carried the dish of meat to an empty table in the corner while the dogs morphed into a good-natured Cerberus, their bodies moving as one as they followed her. The woman, her reddish blond hair the same shade as the dogs, dipped her fingers into the dish and fed each of them by turn. When the waitress returned to the patio to bring my wine, she paused at the birthday table. "They ate the dish," the woman said. Then she laughed and gestured toward the table in the corner.  "Would you like the dogs to sing to you?" she asked the waitress as she  fished her phone out of her pocket.  Cyndi Lauper's "Time after Time" seemed to make little or no impression on the dogs, but the woman did a fair impression of what a dog might sound like if it wanted to sing along with Cyndi Lauper. "C'mon," she said, starting the song again. The canine chorus remained silent.

The Years, Oh the Years

I can't really remember when my mother last visited California before she came to live with me at the end of August. There was a time when she came west regularly, and her stays were lengthy and leisurely....until they weren't. Memory correlates events in weird ways, and it is thus I know that the week in 2007 when the racehorse, Barbaro, shattered his leg was also the week that my mom's twin sister lost her leg. Their trips to California had already ended by then, but it would take a page by page search through photo albums to determine when, exactly, the last trip was. It would require further unearthing to figure out what health crisis or incremental decline ultimately clipped the wings of the two sisters who were always willing to come spend time with me and my family. My aunt has since lost her other leg, suffers from dementia, and now lives in a nursing home. My mother plunged into her own swift  decline as a result of lung cancer in 2009, but she's spreading her wings again, flying solo nowadays. After a drive to Maine for C's wedding last October she realized she could travel, and this summer managed a two-stage move from east coast to west.

For her 88th birthday, we had a small party Saturday with a half-dozen friends that my mom remembered from her past visits in California. Everyone arrived at once, and the shock of all the years and the way they've changed each of us unleashed a momentary confusion. For a minute, it seemed to me that my mom remembered no one, and that my friends could hardly believe that the tiny woman next to me was my mother. I probably looked more like the mother from their memories than she did. But we all stepped through that threshold from past to present, and there we were eating and drinking and talking.

I'm not sure what my mom wished for,  but if I could have a wish, it would be that next year all of us are well enough to remember this party, to recognize one another no matter how time has changed us.