Saturday Beach Report

 Inventory:

Dark sky, blue sky
parade of sailboats

Terns crying overhead
a flock of whimbrels at water's edge
a lone sea lion swimming close to shore

Beachgoers of all varieties
swimmers, fisherman, castle builders, loungers in beach chairs staring out to the horizon,
a man on horseback looking like a vacation ad in a magazine

And a message found on the sand.

The Tall Ship Report

The tall ship San Salvador, the re-creation of Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo's 16th century vessel, is here in Channel Islands harbor. She is beautiful. I hope to watch her sail away for her next adventure on Monday morning. 

My earliest memories are of the Mississippi River. We had a pontoon boat.

My introduction to the tall ship world came several years ago through my daughter, C. While you could not pay me to climb the rigging, nothing beneath my work boots but rope, I'm thrilled to have been introduced to this esoteric world of thrills and beauty.

Saturday Beach Report: Love and Peace

And if that fails, sail away.

Saturday Morning Beach Report/Saturday Night Street Report

On the horizon, a broad chalkmark of lavendar clouds hiding the islands.

The ocean dotted with surfers.Galloping sailboats.

Dolphins.

And me, walking.

Boats full of costumed pirates.

A couple walking a dog named Bo or, perhaps, Beau.

Two middled-aged women doing that excersize walk thing with swingy arms.

A teen-aged couple tucked into one of the nooks on the big bridge. She says to him, "Don't you know anything about your body? Your bladder is here. Your stomach is there."

And me, walking.

Coincidences, Mysteries, Prefigurements, and Foreshadowing

This is a photo of my daughter C.--taken approximately twenty years ago on a family trip to Catalina Island. I think the hat might have actually belonged to the captain of the boat. I don't remember exactly, but I imagine that with three cute little girls in tow, we somehow managed to catch his attention and ended up with a photo op.

Today, after almost six years of sailing historic tall ships, C. herself passed the test that makes her a captain. The  picture was tucked in a photo album hidden away for years on a shelf in our garage, and last week as C. prepared for her captain's test, an image of her in a captain's hat surfaced in my memory.

I'm fascinated by coincidences, and have written about them here and here. And this one is one of my favorites.

Sometimes when I look into the eyes of the man who loves me, I think that he looks familiar, that I know him from somewhere a long time ago. Which seems highly unlikely. Our worlds do not appear to have ever intersected.

Over the years I've had recurring dreams about a house on hill with a grassy slope and a view. In the distance there's the shimmer of water.

photo credit: C's father

A Sea of Love

That's my daughter on the right, her work boots perched on a sturdy strand of rope, her body leaning into  what might be called a trestletree as she furls a sail. What you can't see in this photo is the churning ocean--or me on the deck watching her and trying to fathom how I became the mother of a tall-ship sailor. My element is dirt. Iowa black dirt. Fields of corn as vast as an ocean. Little towns rising up out of the green like islands. C's element is definitely the sea. She loved it from the first time I took her to the beach  the summer she was a year and a half old. I held her in my arms and dipped her in the salty water, then wrapped her in a towel and laid her on the warm sand under an umbrella for a nap. Her love of water and the ocean was one of the first things I understood about her. The rest has come much more slowly, and will, I suspect, continue to be a work in progress. Understanding does not always come quickly between mother and child even when love is boundless.

C. is getting married a week from Saturday. The sea of family love is so deep and so wide right now, so clear and blue that it can barely be distinguished from sky. Tomorrow morning my younger daughter will set out from her northern city and drive east, picking up her grandmother from her eastern city, and later one of C's friends. On Thursday my son and his wife will bundle up their three kids, leave the desert behind and board a plane. About the same time the man who loves me and I will get on our flight from Los Angeles. There will be aunts and uncles, cousins and friends finding their way east by land, by air, and for all I know, by boat. And we will all end up on the rocky coast of Maine to witness two sailors pledge their love to one another.

Love. I feel like I'm swimming in it.

Photo credit: Mr. Ex