Four Weeks (Part Eight)

October 17, 2008, 4:00 pm; posted by
Filed under Articles, Featured, Steve  | 1 Comment

Read the series in parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

To me, California has always existed in a sort of hazy myth. Crowded, temperate, and seismic; home of heroic, half-remembered President Reagan; it was as far removed from my marooned and icy New York youth as ancient Ur.

As a boy, I spent hours planning cross-country road trips, following the example of my father, who crossed the continent at 18 and has the unpaid San Francisco parking ticket to prove it (although, he quickly reminds me, it wasn’t his car). Not many years later, the state was home to my first requited crush, a kind girl from Napa who, it turned out, was by far my wiser. And after my college graduation, my first plane ride was there, courtesy of my grandmother, who gave me a week out West with several close friends, where we climbed Tahquitz and strung up Chinese lanterns in preparation for a wedding.

Seven years later, those not-so-newlyweds had three children, and visiting their home would not only allow me to see them all and return to the California of lore, but also to meet the only Bweinh!tributor I did not yet personally know — the delightfully rational Kaitlin. All told, easily sufficient motivation to weather a return itinerary that would wing me from LA to New York to Phoenix in just under 36 hours.

Have you ever returned to a place you loved, only to find that the utopian glow of nostalgia had made it only a modest imitation of the splendor you remembered?

Me too. But this wasn’t like that at all.

No, instead, returning was all the more wonderful. I had the autonomy to do whatever I liked (including a few trips to a sturdy swing set, as well as buying and devouring a surprisingly readable translation of Don Quixote) and repeated opportunities to help my hosts, which I particularly welcomed, since my entire July had begun to feel like one unending impingement on the kindness of others. I even had the good fortune to witness a late-night thunderstorm, rumbling down from the mountains in a pyrotechnic volley.

As always, the people were the highlight, full of grace and good humor whether we were slinging trash bags into the dump or playing games around a kitchen table. I have never yet regretted a day spent with a Tate (that winter evening we slept on the floor of the unheated lakehouse is another story), Lisa and I defied predictions of a heated melee, and Kaitlin proved even more engaging than her well-crafted (if sadly rare, on these pages) prose. Watching the four sisters interact was eerily like being with my three brothers, with only slightly more talk about fashion.

Before I flew out Sunday evening, the Tates took me to Sarah’s childhood home, where her mother treated us to a delicious dinner, then watched the kids while we headed to the beach. We walked the Santa Monica Pier, past the carousels to the very end, where the brisk sea breeze whistled through the lines of the men and boys fishing for halibut off the side.

And as the sun set into the endless blue Pacific, I ran through the sand and leapt into the crashing surf, plunging beneath the warm ocean, no longer just a legend. A few hours later, as I climbed aboard the plane back to my homeland, I could feel in my brow, taste on my lips, the salty dross the sea had left behind.

I taste it still. I will feel it again.


Comments

1 Comment to “Four Weeks (Part Eight)”

  1. Rose on October 18th, 2008 11:56 am

    While I was reading this prose,
    My brain, apparently froze,
    As a limerick its fee,
    Would be .04 and not .03.
    Vocab is something Steve knows.

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