Got It!

   

    Guess what?  There IS one thing on my bucket list!  Ha!  I fooled you (although not intentionally).  I have always wanted to live at the beach and, before I die, I would like to make good on that.  

    

      The ocean is a powerful draw for me and always has been. As children, we went on day trips to the California beach often and every summer there was at least one beach camping trip.  My college years were spent close to Santa Cruz and the Monterey area.  I went to the beach all the time.  Sometimes it was to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk or the Monterey/Carmel beaches.  But just as often, I trekked out to the more remote beaches between Santa Cruz and San Francisco.  Those days were always renewing. sometimes adventurous, always enjoyable.  Later I ended up living north of the Golden Gate and still spend plenty of days during all seasons of the year at the beach.

     Maybe twenty years ago, I seriously considered relocating permanently to a beach locale.   In order to be affordable, I would likely need to move to a fairly remote beach area.  Fairly remote means few jobs and that leads to no money for rent and food for the family.  Best to set that idea way over there to the side until kids are launched.

     Fast forward twenty years.  Kids are launched.  I'm still working but I can think about some other options.  Here's the thing.  I like my house.  I like my neighborhood.  I don't really want to deal with buying and selling property and I am not sure I want to be in the beach climate 24/7.  Anyone who knows me knows my thoughts on fog and gray.  

    But, here's the creative part.  Who says "living at the beach" has to mean relocating and living all day every day at the beach?  How about this?  How about if I were to really live at the beach for, say, one month a year?  How about I keep my house in my neighborhood but I go live at the beach for intervals?  Maybe one year I live on a NorCal beach for the month of January (one of the best times to visit NorCal beaches, I might add).  Maybe the next year, I find a place to stay on the big island of Hawaii for the month of February.  Perhaps the next year in March, I try Cape Hatteras in North Carolina.  And the pattern continues:  Gold Beach, Oregon, the Jersey shore, Cape Cod, San Diego, Key West, Florida, Acadia, Maine, you get the idea.

    Do you have a favorite beach?  Give me some words about it, please.

B: Brothers and Beaches

    There are, among other things, two things that have been core to my life so far:  brothers and beaches.   I have ALWAYS felt supremely special and lucky to have grown up as a middle child with  seven brothers (four older, three younger) and one little sister.  As kids, my brothers were my best of friends and, at the same time,  the biggest annoyances in my young life.  We were a tight crew on a tight budget and the sense of family was huge.  There was a great deal of pride in being one of the gang because one of the gang meant you excelled in school, you worked hard at anything you attempted, you were seen as valuable to the greater community,  you knew how to be respectful, and you knew how to have fun.  As we marched into adulthood, those aforementioned attributes continued to pay dividends.  Equally important, that sense of camaraderie and support only got stronger.  As a group, we span the baby boomer generation and the oldest of us has hit retirement age.  We have all had children of our own and our children have become best of friends in much the same way we were (and still are).  Although we might not all see each other frequently, I know any of us would drop anything to be there for the sibling in need.  There is a bond that cannot be matched in our relationships with each other.

    It was from my father, I do believe, that all my siblings and I got the connection that we have to the ocean.  My father grew up in Michigan but came to California just prior to the outbreak of WWII.  He enlisted and was stationed in San Diego until shipping out for the South Pacific for three years.  When the war was over, he married my mother and they settled in Los Angles County.  We grew up going camping at Tin Can Beach in So Cal (aka Huntington Beach), or at Jalama (closer to Santa Barbara), and down in Baja California.  As a college kid, I lived about a 35 minute drive from Santa Cruz, CA and spent many weekends (all year round) hanging out on the coast.  I knew that wherever I settled after college, it would need to be a relatively close drive to the beach.  It took me a few years to get through college and grad school but when I was ready to start a family, my husband and I relocated to a wonderful community in NorCal that, yes, features a 25 minute beautiful drive to the beach.

    The most cool times have been when beaches and brothers came together in life's adventures.  The camping trips when we were kids, the college beach outings (yes, several of my brothers were nearby in my college days), the times when, as adults we took our children camping together on California's northern coast - all of these occasions make for the warmest of memories.