“What’s it like to ride a wave?” asked the Missoula, Montana native with whom I fly-fished, side by side in the Blackfoot River. “Were you a surfer?”
I stifled a chuckle to recall the only time I’d taken a stab at the sport: Having snagged first prize—a long board—in a 1965 KRLA radio contest, I couldn’t even balance on it in my own swimming pool. Hang ten wasn’t happening.
“I tried body surfing for awhile,” I boasted, concealing the truth of the matter: I had risked life and limb one Corona del Mar summer to impress a young paramour and, after losing a bikini and the boyfriend, called it quits.
“I really liked to ride a raft,” I told her, intentionally skimming over the earlier grade school era during which my mother took me to the Goodyear Tire warehouse on Arroyo Pkwy in Pasadena to purchase black rubber inner tubes manufactured from automobile tires—my presence necessary to ensure proper fit. No colorful, flimsy, Balboa Island toy-store inflatable for this daughter! These tight-waisted donuts were as durable as a station wagon wheel—and needless to say, far from the envy of any boss Balboa beachgoer. I bobbed—surfing you couldn’t really call it.
Somewhere around age 45, emblematic of a mid-life mortality crisis, the shore break off Newport seemed suddenly far too daunting (had it always crashed so unforgivingly?) But in my youth? Ahhhhh….in my youth…then I was a creature of the sea. I was paddling in it by dawn and had to be dragged from it at dinner by the worrier woman who bore me, then spent every single summer day pacing parallel to the pounding surf off 10th Street, bellowing against the breeze and wildly gesturing with the wave of an arm to “Get back over here!”
No need to fret: My rubber platform provided stable ground on which to chisel through whitewater and slide up safely on the sand. Not a moment’s rest and I was back out again, stroking like some aquiline goddess, hair dripping with seaweed, out to where it was all about the drift, out past the waves where the current carried you down the beach until the umbrella you’d identified “home base” couldn’t be seen with binoculars.
As with most undertakings that I wrestled to the ground like a Sumo before ever really consulting any rubric, I learned about rescue the hard way. At a high school Laguna Beach party I no sooner spread towel on sand than I grabbed my raft and paddled out toward the endless summer—which it nearly was when a rip current got hold of me and within moments the shore and everyone on it was a distant dream.
“Don’t fight it!” I heard faintly from the cupped hands of the on-duty, adorable lifeguard who subsequently tore through the shallow ripples, orange life buoy tucked under one arm, His perfect physique slapped into the five-foot surf and swam to me like Shamu-superman. My classmates convened on dry land to gawk in horror. Can I admit now that secretly I loved the attention?
“Don’t swim straight; the rip’s too strong—go sideways! “ he pointed with the neon preserver once he reached my side, “out of the rip tide and then into the safety of shore. It may be the long way around, but at least you’ll get there.” Indeed, one of life’s valuable lessons.
“In fact,” I told my Montana fishing companion where we stood unscathed, only knee-high in calm water, “I learned a lot from those splendid summers when I spilled from raft to ruin and was often churned like dough and hairballs in a high-speed blender.” These things cannot be gleaned on stiller shores.
Paddle hard, but keep home base within reach. If you find yourself getting carried away, back up, swim sideways—even if you have to forgo the shorter route. You’re never too old for an inner tube, and there is no shame in clinging to your raft to avoid peril to limb and …life? Well, life, as we already know, is a beach.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
What Would Jane Austen Say? Can I really call what I’m writing “Chik-Lit?”
Like everyone who has written more than two sentences that coherently combine, I am trying to market my book to a publisher or literary agent willing to take a leap of faith on an inspired yet unrecognized author. But I passed on all those extension classes and seminars on “how to publish” that were usually scheduled for nights or weekends. (I just don’t function on an intellectual level much above “Law & Order” after 7 P.M.) I’d rather sip a margarita in the evenings or read how-to books such as “Getting Your Book Published for Dummies” or “The Insider’s Guide to Getting an Agent.”
Step one, after I had completed my weighty manuscript, was to craft the quintessential query letter—the single-page that would categorize my book, detail my publishing resume, and reflect my entire story so as to snare a publisher or agent who is the recipient of an average of 1,000 such letters monthly, according to Lori Perkins of Perkins, Rubie & Associates, a New York Literary Agency.
Over coffee with the only friend who has read my future bestseller, we brainstormed my approach: How could I word the letter differently? What combination of elements would entice a professional beyond the proposal to request the manuscript?
“Maybe you need to change what you call it,” my friend offered. “It isn’t really a novel because it doesn’t have the format. It’s not fiction because it’s true, but the names are changed so it’s not technically non-fiction.” Well, I pointed out, non-fiction can include everything from My Love Affair with Windex to The History of a Third World Country. Was it a memoir? Des anyone care about her memories if she’s not Hillary Clinton or Britany Spears?
Lo and behold, a friend of a friend, a published author of mysteries who lives in Hawaii, called me on the phone just as I was tapping away at the keyboard (“non-fiction memoir save for the fictionalized character names”) and asked me to describe the book.
“You’ve got yourself the most popular genre out there,” he said. “I’d kill to have written it. It’s what every publisher is looking for, but you’re not going to like what you have to call it to get the attention it deserves.”
I braced myself.
“It’s chick-lit.”
He was right. How could I lower my standards to using terminology that stemmed from the ultimate movie put-down, “chick flick”? How would I cope with the notion that my paperback edition only would rest on the same nightstand as the TiVo remote set to tape every episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County? Even though I’d been assaulted from all directions by chik-lit titles, some of which had been Oprah selections or on the shelf at my local Starbucks, my ears heard his suggestion as my brain blocked the message, preventing my fingers from typing those words.
But when my issue of Writer’s Digest arrived, the feature story heralded none other than Chick-Lit as the most popular and emerging genre. I was consoled when the editorial content conveyed the fact that these stories are deeper and more significant in character development than they used to be, and quoted Nadia Corner, a literary agent with the Creative Media Agency in New York City as saying: “The novels are no longer just about owning that great pair of shoes.” Thank God.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” reaffirmed my university senior, English major daughter when I called her on the phone to vent my angst. “Everybody here calls Jane Austen chick-lit!” Is she rolling in her grave?
Harlequin, the publisher of tried-and-true desperate housewife themes, whose covers traditionally depict muscle-men bursting out of their shirts and women busting out all over, is now publishing chick-lit erotica for its “Spice” line. But more along my lines, this publishing house is also the home of Red Dress Ink, which finds profit in “hen-lit” for middle-aged heroine portrayers like me. Executive Margaret Marbury, the Writer’s Digest story related, “indicates that the quality of submissions has steadily improved as writers have gained an understanding of the chick-lit approach.”
And so I found myself immersed in researching this trendy field I had known little or nothing about. There is “mommy/mom lit”, and young adult chick-lit that spokesman for Dorchester Publishing calls “locker lit” because the locker is where girls, let’s face it, live. Sadly for the guys, “lad lit” is not doing as well. I can tell them, being the mother of two girls and married to the father of two boys, that guys would never put themselves through what girls do to make any decision, whether it’s falling in love or even crossing a street. And ultimately, women would rather read about men’s dilemmas (if they have them for more than 10 or 15 minutes) than men would. As the article mentions, it’s women who account for most of the audience of films like “What Women Want” or “Jerry Maguire.”
So now that I have too much information, what am I? I sat down once more at the computer and opened the file named “query letter.” As I typed, my muse kicked in, my fingers acquired a mind of their own, and the keys simply took over for me as I reworded the first paragraph to agents and publishers:
“Dear Submissions Editor,
Thank you for considering the publication of my authentic housewife- mother-hen-lit memoir that, since the story involves my teenage daughters, is also locker lit. You should know, however, that since the post-divorce main character worries about anything and everything, especially the romantic rules of mid-life, perhaps I’ve broken ground on a whole new genre—Chicken-Little Lit.”
Eat your heart out, Jane.
Step one, after I had completed my weighty manuscript, was to craft the quintessential query letter—the single-page that would categorize my book, detail my publishing resume, and reflect my entire story so as to snare a publisher or agent who is the recipient of an average of 1,000 such letters monthly, according to Lori Perkins of Perkins, Rubie & Associates, a New York Literary Agency.
Over coffee with the only friend who has read my future bestseller, we brainstormed my approach: How could I word the letter differently? What combination of elements would entice a professional beyond the proposal to request the manuscript?
“Maybe you need to change what you call it,” my friend offered. “It isn’t really a novel because it doesn’t have the format. It’s not fiction because it’s true, but the names are changed so it’s not technically non-fiction.” Well, I pointed out, non-fiction can include everything from My Love Affair with Windex to The History of a Third World Country. Was it a memoir? Des anyone care about her memories if she’s not Hillary Clinton or Britany Spears?
Lo and behold, a friend of a friend, a published author of mysteries who lives in Hawaii, called me on the phone just as I was tapping away at the keyboard (“non-fiction memoir save for the fictionalized character names”) and asked me to describe the book.
“You’ve got yourself the most popular genre out there,” he said. “I’d kill to have written it. It’s what every publisher is looking for, but you’re not going to like what you have to call it to get the attention it deserves.”
I braced myself.
“It’s chick-lit.”
He was right. How could I lower my standards to using terminology that stemmed from the ultimate movie put-down, “chick flick”? How would I cope with the notion that my paperback edition only would rest on the same nightstand as the TiVo remote set to tape every episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County? Even though I’d been assaulted from all directions by chik-lit titles, some of which had been Oprah selections or on the shelf at my local Starbucks, my ears heard his suggestion as my brain blocked the message, preventing my fingers from typing those words.
But when my issue of Writer’s Digest arrived, the feature story heralded none other than Chick-Lit as the most popular and emerging genre. I was consoled when the editorial content conveyed the fact that these stories are deeper and more significant in character development than they used to be, and quoted Nadia Corner, a literary agent with the Creative Media Agency in New York City as saying: “The novels are no longer just about owning that great pair of shoes.” Thank God.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” reaffirmed my university senior, English major daughter when I called her on the phone to vent my angst. “Everybody here calls Jane Austen chick-lit!” Is she rolling in her grave?
Harlequin, the publisher of tried-and-true desperate housewife themes, whose covers traditionally depict muscle-men bursting out of their shirts and women busting out all over, is now publishing chick-lit erotica for its “Spice” line. But more along my lines, this publishing house is also the home of Red Dress Ink, which finds profit in “hen-lit” for middle-aged heroine portrayers like me. Executive Margaret Marbury, the Writer’s Digest story related, “indicates that the quality of submissions has steadily improved as writers have gained an understanding of the chick-lit approach.”
And so I found myself immersed in researching this trendy field I had known little or nothing about. There is “mommy/mom lit”, and young adult chick-lit that spokesman for Dorchester Publishing calls “locker lit” because the locker is where girls, let’s face it, live. Sadly for the guys, “lad lit” is not doing as well. I can tell them, being the mother of two girls and married to the father of two boys, that guys would never put themselves through what girls do to make any decision, whether it’s falling in love or even crossing a street. And ultimately, women would rather read about men’s dilemmas (if they have them for more than 10 or 15 minutes) than men would. As the article mentions, it’s women who account for most of the audience of films like “What Women Want” or “Jerry Maguire.”
So now that I have too much information, what am I? I sat down once more at the computer and opened the file named “query letter.” As I typed, my muse kicked in, my fingers acquired a mind of their own, and the keys simply took over for me as I reworded the first paragraph to agents and publishers:
“Dear Submissions Editor,
Thank you for considering the publication of my authentic housewife- mother-hen-lit memoir that, since the story involves my teenage daughters, is also locker lit. You should know, however, that since the post-divorce main character worries about anything and everything, especially the romantic rules of mid-life, perhaps I’ve broken ground on a whole new genre—Chicken-Little Lit.”
Eat your heart out, Jane.
A single, shining bikini moment
“The bikini is over sixty-three years old,” I announced in the Nordstrom dressing room to my lithe, young daughter. She paused in her attempt to secure the thread-like strap around her back, her eyes wide at my reflection in the full-length mirror. Despite the recent Mervyn’s survey of customers that revealed that 68% of the women shoppers would rather clean bathrooms than try on swimsuits, we were enjoying ourselves—or I was, since I wasn’t the one trying them on.
“Reeeally?” As she tightened the itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny bows anchored on her hips, I caught that look—confounded and a bit concerned. Might this potential purchase not be on the cutting edge, especially if her mother had worn one?
“We’re at Gap Body,” she reassured herself, “so it’s still in style, right?”
“I had one exactly like that,” I smiled to recall, and chuckled to witness her horrified reaction. I considered the cyclical nature of the moment we were sharing even though every young woman’s goal when purchasing the OC summer uniform is to be in sync with her own generation’s bikini coda.
“And I looked so good in it!” Such uncharacteristic braggadocio was, in part, vanity as I grasped for yesterday. The rest was rightful claim to ownership—I had been there, born just five years after the bikini’s birth.
I sat behind her, my nipless and tuckless, midlife long-torso having long ago surrendered skimpy and embraced full-coverage under the umbrella.
“It was bright yellow—when I was 17.” A very good year—the August when I loved 19-year-old John, the Newport Beach tennis player and infamous, daring Wedge body surfer. He would show up at my front door dressed in either brighter than white court clothes or bold, blue swim trunks—stunning. Even my mother had to hold her breath every time she answered his knock.
In the Polaroid picture his older sister sanpped of us on the ocean front, there I stand—tall, tan, young, and lovely. That girl from Ipanema had nothing on me. In that one, glorious instant captured on film, I am at my peak (the month-long one that I thought would last forever)—my hair spills down my back like spun, sun-kissed gold, and my skin is so bronzed that I don’t recognize myself for my pale-faced, Irish nature. Brain Wilson wrote songs about me.
This was the single, solitary summer when my stomach was magically concave. My back flat on the beach towel, my hip bones would lift the bikini edges, ever so enticingly. John was quite the gentleman when he averted his gaze and rescued me with a towel and tee-shirt after an exceptionally tumultuous wave washed my flimsy top to shore, ahead of me, in with the tide.
“Shouldn’t you tie a double knot?” I asked my daughter as she pranced around the dressing room to achieve the best angle on every possible view.
“We don’t wear them in the ocean, Mom.”
It was true; I’d also read that 85% of swimsuits never touch the water. It must have been different during those Beach Boys summers. Either that, or I was one of the other 15%, and clueless.
After we returned home with our handled bags, in an effort to prove to my doubting daughter that I, too, had once enjoyed my moment in the sun, I searched high and low for the photograph. It must have been lost to some overstuffed drawer or discarded when John couldn’t last, like the moment I was made for a bikini. It’s just as well, I tell myself.
Ever since her sister, at two years old, had told it like it is when I had wedged myself into a one-piece high-leg designer slenderizing tank that I thought looked not altogether unattractive, I vowed never to take bathing suit season too seriously. One should never measure attractiveness on the outside, especially this late in the game—although in this sculpted culture, that’s no easy resolution. I should save such deep thought for somewhere other than the shallow end.
“Mama,” she had remarked while gazing from her seat in a stroller at my reflection in the dressing-room mirror, “from the front you would never know about all that stuff going on in the back!”
So instead, I remind myself that everything, including how you look in a bathing suit, is relative. Not long after that enlightening episode, when I walked into the kitchen dressed for my daily exercise regime in black lycra shorts to my knees and a three-quarter length sleeved shirt to match, my 89-year-old father looked up from his cereal.
“You look nice; are you going for a swim?”
I realized that he had lived many years before the bikini was baptized, and in his youthful reverie, my outfit was the revolutionary, alluring answer to bathing apparel.
Hmmm. I wonder if Gap Body and the Beach Boys would buy that.
“Reeeally?” As she tightened the itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny bows anchored on her hips, I caught that look—confounded and a bit concerned. Might this potential purchase not be on the cutting edge, especially if her mother had worn one?
“We’re at Gap Body,” she reassured herself, “so it’s still in style, right?”
“I had one exactly like that,” I smiled to recall, and chuckled to witness her horrified reaction. I considered the cyclical nature of the moment we were sharing even though every young woman’s goal when purchasing the OC summer uniform is to be in sync with her own generation’s bikini coda.
“And I looked so good in it!” Such uncharacteristic braggadocio was, in part, vanity as I grasped for yesterday. The rest was rightful claim to ownership—I had been there, born just five years after the bikini’s birth.
I sat behind her, my nipless and tuckless, midlife long-torso having long ago surrendered skimpy and embraced full-coverage under the umbrella.
“It was bright yellow—when I was 17.” A very good year—the August when I loved 19-year-old John, the Newport Beach tennis player and infamous, daring Wedge body surfer. He would show up at my front door dressed in either brighter than white court clothes or bold, blue swim trunks—stunning. Even my mother had to hold her breath every time she answered his knock.
In the Polaroid picture his older sister sanpped of us on the ocean front, there I stand—tall, tan, young, and lovely. That girl from Ipanema had nothing on me. In that one, glorious instant captured on film, I am at my peak (the month-long one that I thought would last forever)—my hair spills down my back like spun, sun-kissed gold, and my skin is so bronzed that I don’t recognize myself for my pale-faced, Irish nature. Brain Wilson wrote songs about me.
This was the single, solitary summer when my stomach was magically concave. My back flat on the beach towel, my hip bones would lift the bikini edges, ever so enticingly. John was quite the gentleman when he averted his gaze and rescued me with a towel and tee-shirt after an exceptionally tumultuous wave washed my flimsy top to shore, ahead of me, in with the tide.
“Shouldn’t you tie a double knot?” I asked my daughter as she pranced around the dressing room to achieve the best angle on every possible view.
“We don’t wear them in the ocean, Mom.”
It was true; I’d also read that 85% of swimsuits never touch the water. It must have been different during those Beach Boys summers. Either that, or I was one of the other 15%, and clueless.
After we returned home with our handled bags, in an effort to prove to my doubting daughter that I, too, had once enjoyed my moment in the sun, I searched high and low for the photograph. It must have been lost to some overstuffed drawer or discarded when John couldn’t last, like the moment I was made for a bikini. It’s just as well, I tell myself.
Ever since her sister, at two years old, had told it like it is when I had wedged myself into a one-piece high-leg designer slenderizing tank that I thought looked not altogether unattractive, I vowed never to take bathing suit season too seriously. One should never measure attractiveness on the outside, especially this late in the game—although in this sculpted culture, that’s no easy resolution. I should save such deep thought for somewhere other than the shallow end.
“Mama,” she had remarked while gazing from her seat in a stroller at my reflection in the dressing-room mirror, “from the front you would never know about all that stuff going on in the back!”
So instead, I remind myself that everything, including how you look in a bathing suit, is relative. Not long after that enlightening episode, when I walked into the kitchen dressed for my daily exercise regime in black lycra shorts to my knees and a three-quarter length sleeved shirt to match, my 89-year-old father looked up from his cereal.
“You look nice; are you going for a swim?”
I realized that he had lived many years before the bikini was baptized, and in his youthful reverie, my outfit was the revolutionary, alluring answer to bathing apparel.
Hmmm. I wonder if Gap Body and the Beach Boys would buy that.
The Island
My sister perches beside me on the South Bay Front sea wall, our legs dangling over the side, shoes and socks behind us on the pavement. My big toe draws circles in the dry sand. Balboa Island has never looked so good; it is one of those early autumn late afternoons. The sun’s a little higher, the number of sunbathers a lot lower, and there’s something in the air that says summer has seen its day. So have she and I—we’re technically the legal age for AARP membership.
We are part of the generation who in younger days evacuated summer’s sizzling suburban sidewalks to rock, roll and relax on the Island. My decade-older brother reveled in “Bal Week,” the Easter Break melee once patrolled by police cars and banned by parents. But my sister and I were there for the ‘60’s and ‘70’s when it was all groovy: every bronzing beauty was plastered to a beach towel, transistor radio her earring.
Although it’s a different place now to some degree—permanent residences have replaced summer beach cottages—those of us who flocked here to shelve hard shoes and pull out all the stops in Zorries feel the friendly ghosts that still walk the walk. Blindfold us and lead us to the Island Bridge; we can smell it—Dad’s donuts, frozen bananas, and Jolly Roger Bucaneer malts on the breeze. Put a bag over my head and I’d know I was riding that ferryboat across the bay to the fun zone.
We’ve since lost the elders of our family—the ones who made certain we got here every August without fail. Grandparents are long deceased. We chat about our mother and her sisters; all three resembled movie stars: Suzanne was Katharine Hepburn, Eileen, Ingrid Bergman, and Catherine, Grace Kelly with a dash of Lucille Ball. We idolized their easy togetherness while they barbequed Delany’s fresh swordfish on the front porch of whatever house we’d rented. The men stayed working in “town” (Los Angeles) until the weekends. Commute wasn’t a vocabulary word yet.
We smell someone’s gas grill up Apolena Street, and remember charcoal.
I don’t see any children. There are computers now, after school activities, league practices. It’s too early in the fall for UCI Anteaters who by October will bask in the sun like lizards, textbooks shut tightly beside them on the sand. Or will they? If not cyberspace, or MySpace, then “skin cancer” is the household word that clears beaches on such an afternoon. No problem; more for us in our wide-brimmed hats and 45-SPF. We acknowledge the irony of this, recalling our long ago ceremonial application of dark-tanning oil and ritualistic bronzing procedure. In those days, not even a bomb threat could have driven us from our beach towels where we sizzled, sipped Tab and popped Pez and Lido cookies, neither carcinoma nor carbohydrate care in the world.
Today we watch the harbor sea lions slither over bows and sterns of anchored boats. It’s a recent contentious situation for boat owners, this unchecked overpopulation of territorial slugs that inhabit their pleasure crafts. We remember swimming with our favorite cousins across this body of water, sans sea creatures, from South Bay Front to Balboa Peninsula. At night, our agile bodies sometimes left a shimmering wake of phosphorescence. Aunt Eileen would hail us from shore.
“Watch for traffic!” There was none. “Turn around; that’s enough for one night.” No it wasn’t.
We would crawl ashore on the peninsula, panting and gasping and clawing at the wet sand, pretending we had barely reached some desert island.
“We’ll come back on the ferry!” we cupped hand-shaped megaphones to our mouths and yelled back to her through the breezeless darkness. We were adventurers who thought we would always be like this. Instead, I no longer see those cousins. Families are so fractured now—my own children live in New York and Arizona while I will soon reside in Montana with a sister in California. For us, there is little hope of family vacation except by telephone.
This afternoon no one is swimming; there are no toddlers bearing inner tubes, and adventure-seekers are playing video games. If we turn, we can see flashing images through living-room windows on the boardwalk.
We don’t have much time. We need to remember where we parked and get on the freeway to drive opposite directions towards our separate and responsible lives filled with work, husbands, and an ailing father who can’t always remember Balboa, even though it was here that he spent summers as a child and as a young man met our mother.
We’ve talked of everything and nothing—all the nuts and bolts for which we, the new oldest generation of our family, must find the tools. We wax philosophic as we debate the passage of sweet time—the long and short of it. After debating the wisdom of waiting out traffic and lingering for dinner, reluctantly, we rise to leave. I sigh, brush from between my toes the same warm sand from which I once scooped shells, and wonder what I might hold in my hand now that would make me feel better about leaving.
“Where were you the happiest?” my sister wonders aloud as we face the setting sun, two aging seagulls who stand mesmerized by it at the water’s edge.
That’s easy.
We are part of the generation who in younger days evacuated summer’s sizzling suburban sidewalks to rock, roll and relax on the Island. My decade-older brother reveled in “Bal Week,” the Easter Break melee once patrolled by police cars and banned by parents. But my sister and I were there for the ‘60’s and ‘70’s when it was all groovy: every bronzing beauty was plastered to a beach towel, transistor radio her earring.
Although it’s a different place now to some degree—permanent residences have replaced summer beach cottages—those of us who flocked here to shelve hard shoes and pull out all the stops in Zorries feel the friendly ghosts that still walk the walk. Blindfold us and lead us to the Island Bridge; we can smell it—Dad’s donuts, frozen bananas, and Jolly Roger Bucaneer malts on the breeze. Put a bag over my head and I’d know I was riding that ferryboat across the bay to the fun zone.
We’ve since lost the elders of our family—the ones who made certain we got here every August without fail. Grandparents are long deceased. We chat about our mother and her sisters; all three resembled movie stars: Suzanne was Katharine Hepburn, Eileen, Ingrid Bergman, and Catherine, Grace Kelly with a dash of Lucille Ball. We idolized their easy togetherness while they barbequed Delany’s fresh swordfish on the front porch of whatever house we’d rented. The men stayed working in “town” (Los Angeles) until the weekends. Commute wasn’t a vocabulary word yet.
We smell someone’s gas grill up Apolena Street, and remember charcoal.
I don’t see any children. There are computers now, after school activities, league practices. It’s too early in the fall for UCI Anteaters who by October will bask in the sun like lizards, textbooks shut tightly beside them on the sand. Or will they? If not cyberspace, or MySpace, then “skin cancer” is the household word that clears beaches on such an afternoon. No problem; more for us in our wide-brimmed hats and 45-SPF. We acknowledge the irony of this, recalling our long ago ceremonial application of dark-tanning oil and ritualistic bronzing procedure. In those days, not even a bomb threat could have driven us from our beach towels where we sizzled, sipped Tab and popped Pez and Lido cookies, neither carcinoma nor carbohydrate care in the world.
Today we watch the harbor sea lions slither over bows and sterns of anchored boats. It’s a recent contentious situation for boat owners, this unchecked overpopulation of territorial slugs that inhabit their pleasure crafts. We remember swimming with our favorite cousins across this body of water, sans sea creatures, from South Bay Front to Balboa Peninsula. At night, our agile bodies sometimes left a shimmering wake of phosphorescence. Aunt Eileen would hail us from shore.
“Watch for traffic!” There was none. “Turn around; that’s enough for one night.” No it wasn’t.
We would crawl ashore on the peninsula, panting and gasping and clawing at the wet sand, pretending we had barely reached some desert island.
“We’ll come back on the ferry!” we cupped hand-shaped megaphones to our mouths and yelled back to her through the breezeless darkness. We were adventurers who thought we would always be like this. Instead, I no longer see those cousins. Families are so fractured now—my own children live in New York and Arizona while I will soon reside in Montana with a sister in California. For us, there is little hope of family vacation except by telephone.
This afternoon no one is swimming; there are no toddlers bearing inner tubes, and adventure-seekers are playing video games. If we turn, we can see flashing images through living-room windows on the boardwalk.
We don’t have much time. We need to remember where we parked and get on the freeway to drive opposite directions towards our separate and responsible lives filled with work, husbands, and an ailing father who can’t always remember Balboa, even though it was here that he spent summers as a child and as a young man met our mother.
We’ve talked of everything and nothing—all the nuts and bolts for which we, the new oldest generation of our family, must find the tools. We wax philosophic as we debate the passage of sweet time—the long and short of it. After debating the wisdom of waiting out traffic and lingering for dinner, reluctantly, we rise to leave. I sigh, brush from between my toes the same warm sand from which I once scooped shells, and wonder what I might hold in my hand now that would make me feel better about leaving.
“Where were you the happiest?” my sister wonders aloud as we face the setting sun, two aging seagulls who stand mesmerized by it at the water’s edge.
That’s easy.
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