Mom and Teen Ravaged by Wild Skunk on Beach

You know how when you’re walking barefoot on the beach and the sand is all soft between your toes? I slept out on the beach last night. This was something Jessie and I have been wanting to do for years, to camp out illegally with sleeping bags and snacks and fall asleep to the gentle lapping of the waves. And it was indeed wondrous. But let me tell you, sand is not that soft. 

The other reason we slept on the beach was that I was homeless. Yesterday we left our house and Jessie moved into the loft apartment at her dad’s. I’m moving to the Hudson Valley in upstate New York for a while: a Covid migration. I’d had plenty of offers of spare rooms, but I fancied the romantic night on the beach idea for my last sleep in California. The day had been a smoking 102 degrees, so the evening was clear and balmy. Stars were out, and to ice the cake, the Perseids!

We know a private kind of beach with a staircase down from the road where rangers were unlikely to find and cite us for vagrancy with inadequate bedding. We just brought sleeping bags, and fluffy sweaters for pillows. Plus a couple of essentials, like chocolate. The tide when we arrived was really high. There was actually very little beach and once we got ourselves comfortable, the waves were alarmingly close. And they were loud. The lapping thing? More like a dull roar. 

But the stars were legion. We saw the odd meteor streaking across the sky, and lay there trying to figure out why they are still there every year. And where they are. And where they’re going. Then we told funny stories, remembered favorite quotes from movies, and nearly died in a rockslide. It was actually only one rock, but it sounded like lots of rocks in the dark and I had not considered the possibility of being buried in a landslide as we lived out our dream of sleeping by the ocean. 

Then Jessie fell asleep and a short while later I heard some mariachi music. I looked up from my fluffy sweater pillow and saw this Mexican dude down by the water. He was dancing to music on his phone and chattering excitably. Were we about to be stabbed in our sleeping bags by a lunatic? But then he took a long drag on a very fat cigarette and I felt reassured. Stoned guys don’t go round stabbing people they find sleeping on the beach. After a while he danced off and I saw his phone light fade away into the darkness. The whole episode felt every bit as surreal as it sounds.

By this time the tide was receding and with it all thoughts of being dragged out by the waves as we slept. I dozed off. Vivid dreams. And then a familar smell. Skunk. The smell of marijuana is just so much more enjoyable than the smell of skunk, even when it’s accompanied by unhinged dancing dudes. I tried to imagine what a five hour flight would be like if I got skunked. Helpful for social distancing!

Despite the hard sand, the very loud ocean, the landslide, mariachi band, and wild animals, I got some sleep. And when I woke it was 5:30 and the stars were still bright and hopeful and the ocean flat. The moon came out in the predawn, a crescent of light. Jessie’s face was small and sweet, cushioned in her sleeping bag, simultaneously so young and so grown up. I could see a string of lights moving across the horizon, some cruise or container ship steaming slowly out of San Francisco Bay. I could hear its gutteral hum across the quiet water. Goodbye, goodbye California! 

It was worth the wait, all of it.  After the turmoil of the past few months, global and personal, the feelings of overwhelm, the uncertainty, anxiety, sadness and fear, I could finally let go. What is that word for strengthened by fire? Strange how the same set of circumstances can provoke radically different feelings. This move that could terrify me could also elate me. Not so much a choice which to feel, as a choice to feel it all.

Jessie woke, and we watched the peaceful dawn wash over the world. San Francisco was wreathed in a long scarf of fog. A couple came down to the beach with their dog and we waved cheerily. Just came down to see the dawn! With our sleeping bags!

We climbed back up to the Jeep and I packed the last things in my three suitcases. As we drove off, I set up the playlist for our drive to the airport and Jessie asked me which song I would listen to on takeoff, and then she guessed and she was right.

We got to SFO’s International Terminal that also houses JetBlue, only it doesn’t any more. I hopped out of the car and asked a nearby security guard: what have they done with JetBlue? He answered in a broad New York accent. They’re over in the new Terminal One, the Harvey Milk. 

Why did they move? I asked. I may have sounded mildly accusatory. We have a history of turning up at the wrong place in airports. He told me to get back in the car and he came round the driver’s side. It was seven a.m. but I could see he was in a chatty mood. You guys are sisters, right? Let me tell you how to get there. He gave us careful instructions on how to get to Terminal One, which was a few hundred yards away and amply signposted. He asked if we were going to New York. My mom’s moving there, Jessie said. She sounded happy. Hearing her say it like that made it feel so real. He leaned in conspiratorially. Well don’t let her yell at any cops over there. 

I’ve never travelled with so much luggage before. I usually get by even to Europe with carry-on. A few bystanders watched in amusement as I tried to figure out the cart machine release. Then we struggled to balance three large cases on a small cart. And a hat. And a fluffy coat. And a plastic reusable face shield. This was all happening before coffee.

I am used to wrenching goodbyes at airports but this one was a breeze as Jessie is coming out in four days. See you at JFK! I pushed my teetering cart through the double doors. My hips felt like they had spent the night lying on some very hard sand, but there was the promise of coffee and takeoff, a last view of my beautiful adoptive city set in the jewelry of her bay; and everything that lay ahead, twelve states over. Forged, that’s the word.