Home, Family, and Covid
Santa Cruz surfers abide by the mask.
Santa Cruz and San Francisco
17 – 21 July
Sea level—mostly
Foggy and chilly in the morning; hot in the afternoon--typical summer weather along the northern coast of California
I spent the bulk of my youth and college years in the San Francisco Bay Area. If any place is home, it is here. From surfers and punks in Santa Cruz to the mesmerizing Low Riders of east San Jose; from the stranded hippies in the Haight to the mighty Oakland rappers; from the politically active students in Berkeley to the start-up hungry students at Stanford. These were all part of my youth, in one way or another, amongst so much more. The Bay Area defines the tapestry, the smorgasbord, the fric and frac that make up America.
We careened our way up the PCH, passing Aptos and Capitola and then turning into Santa Cruz. The coastline conifers’ sharp fragrance mixes with the faint smell of salt from the chilly ocean. Middle-class homes are tucked closely together, marked with driftwood sculptures, sea-shell clad signs, peeling paint, and roughly strewn lawns. Old men with long grey curls skateboard down East Cliff Drive. A few teenage girls carry boards toward the end of 41st Avenue. Of course, the Giant Dipper, the largest wooden roller coaster in the West, is silent as are all the other rides along the Boardwalk. It is July in Santa Cruz and yet there are very few people coming over the hill for a day at the beach. We rolled down the windows and slowed down, in no hurry as we had already arrived.
Surf. I was never very good at surfing although I really, really, tried. A lot. I had friends who were very good and because of this, I always felt like I was tagging along with them rather than being one with them. That’s kind of why I am surprised that these guys remain friends. We pass messages on FB and share highlights of our lives. We grieve over missed friends. They remind me that, somewhere very deep, we remain and always will be brothers. I’m grateful if gobsmacked.
Some of them still surf, having moved to southern beaches where the waves are more predictable and the water warmer. I understand this and yet the ocean in Northern California, with its chilled Alaskan current, it’s clumps of seaweed, and the bobbling heads of sea lions in the wake, make it both heartier and more part of the earth than the southern currents.
While I never mastered surfing, the knowledge, respect, and love I have for the ocean is profound. I know it, how it moves and breaks, how to let the current pull me in the right direction, how to duck dive and skate through breakers to the mounds that shift upwards to form sheer faces of water-bound joy. Dante and Elena are learning all of this now. Elena is already standing and doesn’t have a speck of timidity in good sized surf. For this trip, Dante was set on standing up. He had gained confidence in the rough break of Assateague back in Maryland and he loved the perfectly curling waves of San Onofre. We had driven up to Steamers Lane, the mythical surf sport just next to the tiny Santa Cruz Lighthouse that now houses a surfing museum. The surf that day wasn’t very big, but he got a sense of the powerful peaks that could rip past this point in the jagged California coastline. He couldn’t’ take his eyes off the sets.
Dante, headed out again . . .
We went down to Manrea State beach, a wide sandy swathe with a fair break that, on that morning, was breaking 2 – 3 foot; not very much but enough for an 11-year-old. He grabbed my board and went back and forth, in an out, trying, trying, trying. I left him alone. He needed to find his own way. He punched and grabbed at the breaks. He’d try to get in position, only to have the wave crash on top of him or to roll under him, leaving him behind the break and ill prepared for the next set. He kept trying. And then, on a puckish little wave with nice curls of white beneath him he STOOD. After that, it was impossible to get him out of the water. He is a surfer and always will be.
After Santa Cruz, we continued up the PCH to San Francisco where we stayed with my brother and his family. He brought home a cast of crabs and made a feast, accompanied with fresh artichokes. We dipped great slabs of both in melted butter and talked about family and Corona. We took a walk along Ocean Beach, under the dense patch of fog that seems permanently pinned to this part of the city. I quoted Mark Twain’s line—the coldest winter he spent was a summer in San Francisco—too often.
San Francisco had +4,000 Covid cases at the time. It was enough to keep most people at home. Helen, my brother’s wife, fretted over her parents, old and hard Russians, he with all kinds of ailments and she with the brawn of a thousand women. They lived upstairs and yet she hadn’t visited in several weeks. This was my brother’s insistence. Helen’s sister, brasher and without an insistent boyfriend in tow, visited her parents often. I told my brother of an NPR story that talked about the same story: a grandmother whose daughter hadn’t visited at all during the pandemic but whose son visited often, bringing the grandchildren along. The grandmother explained that she didn’t tell her daughter, preferring not to worry her. My bother snorted, taking it as an afront when I meant it as another example of the magical thinking we’ve all adopted during this time.
After San Francisco, we then went down to his big house in San Jose. Justin has a passion for projects—for finding tricks and trades to refinish, retouch, rebuild, improvise and improve, the last being a bit of a question in his case. Like many who engage in DIY, the projects can take over the home, one cascading into the next, with the detritus of it all left in piles all around the place. He wanted praise about it all, even though he implored us to tell him what we really thought. Silvia was effusive and glowing and even though he could see through her enthusiasm, it made him feel better. I, of course, told my little brother what I really thought—that it was a mess and that it all seemed half-assed. It’s been a bit frosty ever sense.
Families are hard. We steer into each other because we can, because we have to/should be there for each other, and because we know each other best. Yet, the older I get the more I recognize how flimsy the interactions are—the bonds are strong, but all of the other stuff is like meek Jello. We don’t know how to chill out and let it form into something more than sinuous links and more like a real relationship. Covid hasn’t helped. It has separated and divided families so that we are living in ever diminishing pods, more and more alone.