I won’t bore you with the hideous details concerning the move. Just remember that word, should you be tempted yourself by whispers of fast,fat sales and bidding wars: hideous. Eighteen years of life (in a much bigger) house. Thirty-one + years of collected stuff. Furniture. China. Refuse.
And now, all gone.
But of course there’s the good part, the really wonderful part actually that’s behind all of this carting of boxes and renting of dumpsters; we are moving full-time and always to California’s Central Coast.
We’ve been here, sort of, for a long time. But we’ve been here for weeks, or winter break, or a summer or sometime nearly half-time. Now we’re here.
A cool breeze blows off of the water and the sun shines. I feel some authority to speak about the place now as a full-time Local. I want to talk about farmers’ markets, about the Community Garden and my thriving plot there (thanks fo the help of fellow gardeners Dave and Mary Ann), about ripe tomatoes and peaches about the arrival of summer, abut the controversy over wind machines ad where to find the freshest fish. What else? About cooking foods that are the quintessential Central Coast meals and about birds–hawks, egrets, plovers and constantly cooing doves. Local olive oils and live theater. The cows on the hillside. What it’s like to move to a cottage after living in a large house. My Brazilian mother. And Brazilian music. About the kind of community that exists between everyone who lives near the sea–in California, Baja, Santos or Rio, the Caribbean and Saint Lucia, or the Spanish Riviera or Southern France, Greece or Newfoundland. The ocean makes us all live in a particular rhythm.
I want to ponder too the difference it makes when one gives up professional clothing and wears only gauze pants, slouchy jeans, fedoras and the occasional dress. (Admittedly, this started for all of us during Covid.) Tee shirts and yoga pants.
And speaking yoga, to talk about what it’s like to be a beach girl/yoga girl of a certain age.
Call me. Ask me where to eat or were to taste the best wine.Or for directions to the best dog beach.
I’m here: live from the Central Coast.