May 12, 2019
My father taught me about walking on beaches. I was four when he had a coronary that promoted him to stay-at-home dad. We lived near the beach then, in Ventura, and we would walk it hours each day. It was his physical and emotional therapy, although I didn’t understand that at the time. I understood that there were quiet times and talking times and we got to choose them. I understood that we both got a jawbreaker at this beach hut along the way.
Until yesterday, the last time I was at the beach was with Jack. It was a year ago. He was well enough after his brain surgery to travel, and I felt it was paramount that he drink up the Pacific and her negative ions as part of his recovery. I took him to Fort Bragg, to our favorite beach access motel. I did not walk the beach, but instead I watched him walk the square from the motel to the bluff and back again. He was starved for solitude, so though I wanted to come I held back, giving him that and the gift of autonomy. He would go a few times each day, his strong sillouette etched against the skyline. He’d get back to the room and report on his new best friends, a family of sea-lions he could see nestled in the rocks as he looked down from the bluff.
Yesterday, I returned to a different beach. Traveling from Rohnert Park where I’d visited my son, I got the sudden message to head to Stinson Beach. When I lived in San Francisco in the 80s, it had been my favorite getaway. It was crowded of course, the first nice Saturday of the season. But I managed to find Blue a parking place across the street from a café that served excellent clam chowder. I sipped on a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and waited for my soup. There was a half marathon happening in town, and runners were sprinkled into the mix with their numbers and Camelbaks. I people watched and enjoyed the salty sense of the air before I headed to the beach and took off my sandals.
I navigated the college kids, young families, and couples of all ages to get to the waterline and walk south to the familiar outcropping of rock. I realized I hadn’t walked by myself on the beach since well before I had my hip replacements in 2016. Probably five years, and that beach had been Rockaway Beach, where I’ll be in a few weeks. I felt my feet meet the wet sand in a luscious reunion. And of course I thought of Jack.
Looking around at all the couples, I realized that since I was in 8thgrade that had been my sole agenda: to partner up. I was a champion serial monogomast from then on, either partnered up or scheming on whom to partner up with. Being alone never occurred to me to be a lifestyle choice, but a temporary pause or glitch until life resumed.
I believe we all come in to each other’s lives for a reason, or for many reasons. The gifts Jack gave me are so many and so rich I’ll spend the rest of my life counting them and appreciating them. As I turned to walk North, I basked in the feeling I now have of not wanting to partner, to embrace my new life alone in the world. And then it hit me like the gentle waves I was dancing with, yet another of his gifts to me. He prepared me for this: to be alone on this beach, in this life, and to still feel complete. To feel whole and capable and lovable in my solitude. That was one piece of magic he had for me and shared with me.
On the beach you take nothing but photos and leave nothing but footprints. But I took something more. A gift, tied like a present with a perfect seafoam bow. My sovereignty, nestled in my body’s core with indelible, infinite love.