Year: 2016 (Page 5 of 6)

It used to rain in the Bay Area.

When I was a student at Cal, a raincoat, umbrella and waterproof boots were necessities for making the trek to class. There would be whole weeks, months even, of daily rain–at least in my memory. Huddling in coffee shops with steamed-up windows, I would sip hot lattes and do homework after draping my dripping raincoat over a chair and slipping out of my soggy boots. 

If it was winter, it was raining. I could count on it.

Rain is scarce these days; we live with a drought. Some winters are better than others, but the overall condition is dry. I call it the New Dry California. Lawns are disappearing, replaced by low-water native plants and succulents. Cloudless, sunny days go on and on, lovely but parched. We go about our business and recreation, no need for foul weather gear, no rain delays, no rain checks, but we feel a little guilty for enjoying it. The reality of drought clouds the days. How we long for literal clouds!

The lightest drizzle has us rejoicing. Rain! At last! We pull out parkas and umbrellas, hoping to coax the drops to fall harder and faster. Children don little-worn boots and bright yellow hooded raincoats when the pavement is barely dotted with raindrops. It’s a dress-up game for them, like Halloween. Raindrips.

There’s little complaint when it does rain. We welcome the interruption. A soggy football game? A cocktail party pushed indoors? Dinner inside instead of on the patio? Hair flattened and flipping in the wrong places because I don’t carry an umbrella anymore? No problem. “We need the moisture,” we all say hopefully to each other. “I hope it keeps coming.”

The weather can’t be counted on. That’s why it’s such a good topic of conversation. It’s endlessly surprising and unpredictable. The sunrise and sunset, the phases of the moon and tides–these can be counted on. We get into a weather pattern and we think it will last forever. I would never have imagined a Berkeley winter could be so sunny and fair from my steamed-up coffee shop of the ’80’s.

I had six little weather systems enter my life over the course of 11 years–my kids. I ordered my life around their patterns. The sun rose and set with them. They were the tides that determined my days. Patterns of weekdays and weekends, school terms and summertime, homework and playtime determined where I went and what I did. It was predictable. Reliable.

I started to notice the climate shifting a bit when the first one left for college, but the daily weather stayed steady, even as the next one and the next one cleared out. I did see it coming, but it’s hard to imagine what the drought will feel like before it actually arrives.

I started noticing it first at 3:30 on school days. That was the time I had to come back on full-time duty–driving, feeding, helping with projects or homework, getting the day tucked in and wrapped up in preparation for the next day. Gradually, the line softened and the afternoon began crossing into evening without a hitch; no one needed anything. They had their own transportation, schedules and lives. It became obvious on weekends and in the summer, too, with no great influx of people and activity. The new normal weather in at home is calm.

I do not lament this climate change like I do the drought in California; this is a good thing. This is life moving along in a positive direction, children growing up and into themselves. It is cause for celebration.

It changes how we live, though. Clean laundry, home-cooked meals and cookies in the freezer (that’s where I like to keep them because I hate stale cookies) are as unpredictable as the next cloudburst. My husband and I are learning to enjoy the lack of storms and rain-delays, and are talking about taking up new hobbies and dreaming of long, romantic trips we may take, just the two of us. This is a break in the weather that we can take advantage of, knowing that the dry spell may not last long.

Like the weather, when and where we will be together can be unpredictable. We are learning to be intentional about keeping in contact (Storm tracking? Rain dances?) to support, encourage, and occasionally,  bail out our kids. There are holidays, vacations and visits when we are together; planned occasions outside of the everyday. That’s the part I can control (Irrigation? Am I taking the analogy too far?).

In the middle of my routine the other day, I got a text. “What are you up to tomorrow?” A text like that from a child is the first drops of a little weather coming in. “Wanna hang out?”

I welcome the interruption. I love it when my kids come home, ask for a favorite meal, need to do laundry or just want to hang out. I need to see them, hold them, make sure they know how much they are loved, how much we like them, how much we love to be with them.  I’ll drop everything to spend time with them.

My babies are never far from my thoughts. I’m always ready for the next shift in the wind, always hoping they will blow in and stay for a while.

When I swim, the stroke I do most easily and most frequently is the side stroke. I never see anyone else doing this stroke, and my kids were not taught it in swimming lessons, so I thought it was outdated, a stroke no one does anymore. Curious, I typed the name into my search bar to see what information I could find.

I found YouTube videos on how to do it, and watched to see if I remember it correctly, with a scissor kick and alternating arm reaches. Yes, it was demonstrated there just as I remembered it. In one of the videos, the instructor classified the side stroke as a resting stroke, or a rescue stroke. Mildly offended, I stopped that video and continued to look for more positive information about my favorite mode of propulsion in the water.

As I thought about it, mulling over my arguments for why this stroke is much more than a “resting stroke,” I had to admit that it makes perfect sense. Of course it would be my favorite. I am more tortoise than hare, more Type B than Type A, more take a  break than break my neck.

This is not a secret, but it’s still a little hard to admit in such a straightforward way. It’s like saying your favorite subject in school is recess. The side stroke is the “let’s have coffee” stroke, while the butterfly or the freestyle strokes say, “let’s get down to business!”

I took another look at my search results today, and a little further down the page I saw an article entitled “Combat Side Stroke.”  It’s missing from the local pools, but the side stroke lives on. This is the stroke the Navy Seals use. It has a low profile in the water, it’s efficient, and a person can swim long distances using this stroke. A side-stroker can carry weapons or equipment,  or even tow a person along.  Like the faster strokes, it requires a strong core.

I sat up a little straighter. This isn’t just an easy, lazy stroke. This can be a powerful stroke. This stroke could save the day.

I don’t have much need for toting heavy supplies in the water, but I like the side stroke because with this stroke–unlike some other strokes that I’m not as good at–I can breathe.  I can see where I’m going. I don’t snort water or bump my head on the pool wall.  When one side is tired, I can flip over and continue on at a steady pace. It doesn’t look slick or professional (except maybe to the Navy Seals conditioning at the Y), but I’m using energy and strength to move myself through the water at my pace. It’s swimming.

I’ve made peace with my temperament and my swimming style. I’m not the over-achiever, I’m not the go-getter or the trail-blazer; I’m the thinker and the talker, the one coming along beside or behind. Everyone swims their own race, and I’m happy with mine–but I’ll have a new sense of pride in my slow and steady side stroke when I jump in the pool next time.

I feel at home in the water, thanks to summers of swimming lessons in the pool at Arrowhead Springs, where my parents attended their organization’s staff training and I went to summer camp.

The pool was huge, surrounded by grass and cabanas, a place you could imagine glamorous Hollywood bathing beauties of the 30’s lounging and playing.  At the entrance, there were graceful curving steps lined with bushes covered in  small, white pinwheel flowers, filling the air with the delicious scent of orange blossoms. The pool had curving edges with shallow shelves for reclining in the water. At the deep end, there were three bouncy diving boards, two low boards and one high dive with steps up the back,  leading to heights that seemed terrifying as a child.

Under the watchful eye of life guards in red trunks, big straw hats and white, zinc-oxide-covered noses, swim lessons started in the shallow end with basic strokes and water skills, and moved to the deep end over successive summers. Those lessons seem pretty intense as I look back on them now.

The test to pass the highest level required us to tread water and do the dead man’s float for several minutes, swim the length of the pool in the basic strokes, and dive off the low diving board. Challenged by the instructor, I dove off the high board once as well, even though I was only brave enough to dive from a sitting position. I got a bloody nose when I hit the water–sort of badge of honor, I thought–but I never tried anything but a cannon ball from the high dive again.

My favorite stroke from those lessons is the side stroke.  I can still hear the instructor telling us to reach forward, pick an apple, then pull it back and put it in the basket.  For some reason, I don’t see anyone else doing the side stroke when I swim laps at the pool at the Y. It definitely isn’t in the Olympics. 

We spent many hours as a family at the pool just playing. My sisters and I sat on the bottom in the shallow end, holding our breath and pretending to have tea parties. We played chicken with my dad and my cousins, putting the lighter kids on the shoulders of the older ones, and trying to dunk each other. My dad would swim with us on his back, or stand us up on his shoulders to jump or flip into the water. My mom preferred to sunbathe and read in a chair on the grass, not wanting to get her hair wet. 

We thought it was hilarious to bring all our  hair in front of our faces under water and then come up and flip it back in a neat roll and pretend to be George Washington. Sometimes we would throw coins in the  pool and dive down to the bottom to retrieve them. We had contests to see who could stay under water the longest or who could glide the farthest under water by pushing off the side. We never got tired of being in the water.

When we had to take a break from swimming, we hunted for lizards around the edges of the grass, and make temporary pets of the little blue bellies among the rocks. One little lizard I caught died from fright, or maybe I squeezed it too hard. I hoped it was just playing dead, like they did sometimes, and put it carefully on  rock to recover. When I checked on it later,  it hadn’t moved, and I felt sad about hurting it when we only meant to play. 

If we stayed until after dark, we would occasionally cross paths with huge, hairy black tarantulas crawling slowly in the road, seeking heat after the sun went down. They seemed almost friendly in their careful, awkward walk, but we screamed and ran, loving the thrill of it.

My older cousin and I loved to go the steam caves, which had natural hot springs running underneath and heating the little caverns. The caves had a range of temperatures, from cool to hottest, and we dared each other to stay in the hot ones and breathe the steamy air. The smell of sulfury steam mingled with the scent of the wet wood benches and grates is a distinct one I can imagine even now. Those memories must be the reason I still love the stinky, steamy air at geothermal sites like Yellowstone.

At the end of the day, a deep breath was sometimes painful,  making us cough. We called it “getting smogged,” the result of breathing the dirty Southern California air of the 70’s. At school, we were not allowed to play outside on the worst smoggy days, but during the summer there were no restrictions. The feeling would usually be gone by the next day, and we wouldn’t hesitate to head back to the pool for more.

Memories of those sweet days of sun and swimming and playing with my family make me love being in the water even now. I don’t care if no one else is doing the side stroke.

The Bay Area. That’s where we live, and that body of water, the San Francisco Bay, defines us by where we live in relation to it–East Bay, South Bay, the sunny side of the bay, or through the tunnel. Some say you don’t live in the Bay Area unless you can see the bay, others contend that as long as you have a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station nearby, you’re in. San Franciscans would gladly disown all but those who live between San Francisco State University and the Golden Gate Bridge, I suspect. It’s a big bay, and there are many communities perched around it claiming it as their own.

I love looking at the bay. It changes constantly, reflecting the sky in blue or gray or orange, sometimes choppy and sometimes glassy, always alive with activity. The ocean just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge sends cooling fog over the hills and through the gate. It never gets old, it never fades into the background. It owns this area.

When someone is talking about being here, they often refer to their location as “in the bay.” Not literally in the water, but in the area defined by this body of water that is home to Angel and Alcatraz and Treasure/Yerba Buena Islands, is spanned by six bridges, and is host to cruise ships, sail boats, whales, sharks, kayakers, dolphins, Dungeness crabs, tour boats, ferries, and container ships, to name a few.

I’ve lived most of my time here on the edges of the bay: throwing a ball in for my dog to fetch, walking out on the pier, sharing a sunset drink at a bayside bar, walking on the Bay Trail, or simply enjoying the scent of the sea from a distance. The Target parking lot always has a brisk, salty breeze that reminds me how close the water is.

Recently, I actually got in the bay. Really in it–hair wet, salt in my mouth, all the way in the bay.

After a guided kayaking adventure in the Monterey Bay over the summer, I decided I wanted to do it more often. Kayaking is a relatively easy entry to water sports; there’s not much set-up or clean-up, and you don’t have to be at the peak of conditioning to enjoy it.

In order to feel safe kayaking without a guide in the future, I signed my husband and I up for a class at the Berkeley Marina. I thought later that a little less thorough introduction to the sport would have been sufficient, but since we signed up and paid, we went ahead with it. I had an idea that there might be some instruction about what to do if you became separated from your kayak, but I tucked the thought away, not really wanting to engage with that possibility.

Our instructor was kind and easy-going, talking us through the basics on land, helping us find the right wetsuits and personal flotation devices, and giving us straps to keep our sunglasses on. I really should have headed for the hills then.

We lugged our kayaks to the pier, got in to the wobbly vessels without incident, and headed out to paddle around the marina. I was just getting comfortable when our leader called us to circle up and he told us how to get back into our kayaks if we capsized when we were with a partner. Fine. Then he said we would all do it. My stomach began to churn. I knew there was no way I could haul myself out of the water into a rocking boat with my weak arms.

The moment of truth came. I had to do it. The instructor seemed confident that I could. I took a breath, rocked to the left, my mind screaming, “Really?!? You’re doing this?!?” and next thing I knew I was sputtering in the cold water, flipping my kayak, and following the steps with my partner to return to my seat in the boat. Somehow, I did it. Relief.

We got out of the water for lunch, and I was feeling pretty good. I had done the thing I dreaded. There was one more thing I dreaded more, but I was trying not to think about it. Looking back on it, I can’t believe I didn’t bolt then. I’m sure everyone would have understood.

Back in the water, we paddled around some more. We circled up, and this time learned how to put what looked like an inflatable pool toy on the end of our paddle to use in a “self rescue” if we capsized alone. I promised the instructor that I would never kayak alone. I confessed that this time, there really was no way my tired arms would get me out of the water and into a rocking kayak. He laughed. “You can do it–visualize it,” he said. My husband had taken the plunge first, and called out encouragement to me.

Once again, against every instinct, I rocked my kayak hard and held my breath, kicked out of the seat, came to the surface and flipped my boat over. This time, I paused for a moment, caught my breath, dipped my head back in the water to get my hair out of my face, and started the self-rescue procedure.

It involves throwing a leg over the paddle, which is floating in the water on one end and on top of the kayak on the other end, heaving up onto the kayak, and carefully spinning around to slide your legs into the boat, then somehow balancing while you get your bottom into the seat. I got to the spinning part once, lost my balance and went into the water again and had to start over. The second time, somehow, I did it.

The sense of relief was complete this time. It was over.

To finish up the class, we paddled out of the marina in into the open bay. Once outside the calm of the marina, the chop and swell of the bay felt wild. “Roll with it!” our instructor told us. “Stay loose!” I was working hard to relax and not tense up.

It was amazing, it was thrilling, it was hard. I was on the edge of panic but trying to push it down. I was terrified I’d capsize. My husband looked at ease and confident; he assured me that we wouldn’t flip in the waves. The instructor paddled up beside me with encouraging words.

We paddled under the Berkeley Pier and around a rocky outcropping into more protected water and made for the dock. My arms and legs were screaming for a break. My hips felt broken. After pulling up to it and tossing my paddle up, I rolled onto the dock and collapsed onto my back. We made it.

There were 10 of us in the class. We started out as polite strangers, but by the end of the day, I felt a bond with them. We had rooted for each other. They were witness to perhaps my worst hair day ever (I literally gasped when I got home and saw myself in the mirror). We had all taken the plunge together and lived to tell.

I can only hope that if I ever have to rescue myself in a real capsize situation, adrenaline will somehow carry the day.

Sundays are quiet days at our house, and even if we have plans, they feel lighter than plans for other days. White wine and Sunday afternoons go together. It’s a reflective, day-dreaming day.

As a child, Sunday meant eating our main meal right after church, usually hearty traditional fare, and after our time around the table, the rest of the day was open, with napping encouraged. The smell of a roast in the oven, cooked to pull-apart tenderness along with potatoes and carrots, takes me back to childhood Sundays. The evening meal would be small and casual, maybe leftovers.

I still hold loosely to the tradition, making lunch the big meal of the day. It’s not often a roast or a whole, stuffed chicken; those kinds of feasts are reserved for company or holidays now.  I like to take the rest of the day off from cooking, telling the kids it’s a free-for-all night. Lately, I make popcorn for an evening snack to enjoy with a favorite television show. Downton Abbey was the perfect Sunday vibe for me, although Walking Dead worked too when the kids all wanted to gather ‘round and watch together.

Weekdays are filled with work and school, meetings and appointments. Saturdays are relaxing, but usually busy with recreation or catching up, doing the tasks that were neglected in the busyness of the week. Sunday, for us, is different. It’s a day of rest.

This kind of pause in the craziness of life can be hard to find. Sunday is a work day for many people, or a second Saturday that gets crammed with events and chores. When I was young, church, Sunday dinner and a day of rest was a cultural standard. Shops were closed, or at least closed early, and most people took the day off from life-as-usual. That’s not true anymore.

That doesn’t mean we don’t still need it.

A place with a view of water–lake, bay, ocean, even a river–can cast a Sunday spell on me on any day of the week. Gazing at water, it’s easy to get caught up in a reverie, to let my mind roam, to allow creative thoughts bubble to the surface. It can be a problem-solving space for me too; when I stop and listen, hurts or concerns that have been nipping around the edges of my mind have room to stretch out so I can look and them and deal with them.

I don’t think I’m alone; Herman Melville says, “Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.”

There’s something about it: the lullaby motion of waves and currents, the wavy distortion of the secrets hiding in the depths, the tension on the surface that holds some objects up to float and pulls others down to sink. It’s mysterious and open at the same time, welcoming and forbidding, gentle and overwhelming. Just thinking about it gets my mind swirling.

If you can’t take a whole day to rest, maybe you can find some water to gaze at. Ishmael, in Melville’s Moby Dick, confesses that “whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

We don’t need to cast off in a whaling vessel–that turned out to be stressful in Ishmael’s case–but the instinct to get to a body of water, where meditation can calm and soothe our overloaded, frazzled 21st century minds, is a good one.