Thursday Evening Beach Report

My friend Ellen, visiting from L.A.

We watched the sun set behind Santa Cruz Island

The willers watched it too.

And for some reason, this photo of Dan appeared with the other photos that I selected from my iPhoto for this post. I uploaded this picture of him about six weeks ago when we were putting together a slide show for his memorial. I didn't choose it for this post, but here it is. 

Report from Pillville: The orthotics, the fall-detector button, mental decline, and lingerie?

My mother's feet have killed her most of her life. "It's because we grew up wearing other people's shoes," she says over and over again. "You'd have bad feet too, if all your shoes came from a church rummage sale." Then of course there's the fact that for years she had jobs that kept her on her feet all day while she was wearing those shoes that didn't fit properly--and she walked to and from work--or at least to the bus.

When I was a kid, buying shoes was kind of like going to the doctor or the dentist. We went to THE shoe store where we had our feet measured (both length and width) and a professional shoe salesman came out with the appropriate styles that would fit our particular feet. It was such a big deal that I remember that the names of the salesmen to which my mother entrusted the process.

I'm trying to return the favor here in Pillville, but the first foot doctor was, I'm certain, the brother of the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors. We're on the third podiatrist now, and my mom hates the way she trims her nails--though it is not with power tools. As for the orthotics, well, they might make nice trivets, I suppose.

The fall-detector button is swell, so it seems. The range of the base unit is pretty amazing, and my mom is willing to wear the thing. The form that I must send in to the lifeline folks is a testament to our lack of support network. There are half-a-dozen spaces to write the names of relatives, friends, and neighbors who are within 15 minutes of our house. I suppose I could write my name in all of them.

I'm really trying to open my eyes to things that could cause a fall, and tomorrow a heater will be installed in the ceiling of my mom's bathroom ceiling right next to the shower. She's been dragging one of those little oil filled plug-in radiators back and forth between her bathroom and bedroom, despite the fact that I've offered to do it almost every time. To which she answers, "No, I don't need it." Then she moves it.

This morning we spent hours going 'round and 'round over a bank statement and a credit card. Numbers do not make a whole lot of sense to her anymore, though through some burst of fortitude or a moment of clarity, she managed to get on the phone to one of her favorite mail-order catalogues last week and order 7 sets of matching bras and panties in every color of the rainbow. Given my love for nice lingerie, I'm hoping that's a genetic skill that I'll be able to count on when I'm 89.

All-in-all, Pillville is without a crisis right now. But my mom is sleeping more and is less active. Her hearing is worse; her grip--both literally and figuratively--is weakening; and names for almost everyone have skated off into the polar vortex. She still loves to eat though and is maintaining her weight. And she still has that martini almost every night.

As for the other ancient resident of Pillville, Piper the cat, we're doing our best to keep a bit of CatSure in both of her bowls--the one next to her bed in the laundry room and the one on the coffee table (I know.)  She feels heavier to me, but it might be wishful thinking. Piper got a catalogue of her own in the mail today. Maybe she'll order a new collars in an array of colors.

As for me, my favorite catalogue looks like this:

And yet, here I am in paradise.

january afternoon view to Anacapa and SantaCruz islands

Anacapa and Santa Cruz were both lost behind a veil of fog this morning. My brain felt much the same as I tried to remember what the yoga teacher said. It was something I needed, something I relished when I heard it, but then it was gone. Hidden like those islands, sunk inside me somewhere, and I am mentally stretching out my arms to it, trying to pull it back, this perfect thought that meshed with the gears of my particular now.

Beach glass comes in four basic colors here on the sands of Margaritaville. Clear, amber, blue and green. There are, according to my inventory, two shades of amber, perhaps three or four distinct types of green, and two vastly different colors of blue--cobalt and aquamarine. Yesterday, for the first time in my 15 months of collecting, I found a piece of red beach glass. Today I found two more. Like the bit of illusive yogic wisdom, beach glass can shimmer right there at your toes and then be swept back out to sea again.

I berate myself sometimes for the beach glass hunting. Is it some weird compulsion like egg collecting? Unlikely, I suppose, since it's doubtful that I'll wipe out the world's supply of Heineken bottles. But I worry about the recognizable gleam in the eyes of other beach glass fanciers if we happen to lift our eyes from the sand long enough to speak. I'm sure the heart of the man I spoke to this morning began to beat a little faster when I showed him the two ruby morsels.

All I know is that I can arrive on the sand, heart sometimes still pumping residual dread even after yoga or t'ai chi chih, and after my fingers trace the sanded curves of what was once sharp and dangerous, I feel smoother too. I bring my pocket full of jewels home and rinse them in the laundry room sink, then lay them on the kitchen counter so my mother can see them. Each time she's amazed, and some mornings we hover over them, marveling like two old dragons, proud of the treasure amassing in our lair.

Only the wildlife at the shore can easily pull my fickle eyes from the treasures on the sand. Pod of whales, school of dolphins, flock of pelicans, or willets, or curlews, or other birds--and I am at the mercy of the intangible connection I feel to the creatures who inhabit the place I love best.

There were birds this morning flying from north to south, barely visible at the smeared line where foggy sky met foggy sea. Almost like floaters in a damaged eye, they felt both real and like a hallucination, these birds who must have numbered in the tens of thousands, moving across the parchment of the horizon like an infinite calligraphy. So many birds that I stood watching, awestruck--almost frightened--at their numbers. Too far away to i.d., they kept coming. I walked for an hour shifting my eyes from the sand to the the horizon, and always when I looked up, the line of birds was there, winging onward as if they knew something I didn't. Something I should flee or fly towards, something I can almost see, but not quite.