Echoes

Los Angeles, California

We left Carmel yesterday, after a few days of intermittent packing (to avoid that last day marathon thing). We always try to visit some favorite restaurants in the last week, and to have drinks at favorite watering holes. We did a bang-up job of this including a dinner at a local fave Mundaka, an operation manned by our favorite local proprietor, Gabe Georis. For years we rented a house across the street from Gabe's parents -- this during the time that Gabe and his brother were growing up. The house looked a lot like the restaurant Casanova, which the family owns.

Driving away from our home-away-from-home is hard, but, after five and a-half weeks it was time to return to LA. Not that there was much I was missing there besides my mom, my friends, and my salsa community. Didn't miss my house, much. Didn't miss my community where everyone is pretty cranky and aggressive. Didn't miss Ventura Boulevard which is ugly and congested.The Valley was never like that, but it has changed a lot.

We will return to Carmel in less than eleven months, and have some other travel plans loosely coming together for the coming seasons. In the meantime, I will spend forty days observing Lent commencing shortly. There will be a full baseball season, one in which I hope the Dodgers do better than last year (they should, with that payroll). We will do some work and some updating on our home. Some gardening. And we'll enjoy our pool during the summer months. All good things, though you never know what is around the corner.

Meanwhile, life for the people here in Carmel will go on, but Carmel will cease to exist for us, much like the village of Brigadoon. Except in this case, our village comes to life once a year, thankfully, rather than once each century. On Sundays, parishioners will attend Mass at the Mission, and men, mostly, will play golf at Pebble Beach. The Bench will fill up on both sunny and not-so-sunny days, and people will drink wine and Bloody Marys by the fire pits. The bagpiper will play down the sun each night at the Inn at Spanish Bay. Happy hours will continue at The Rio Grill, and a ton of artichokes will be fire-roasted and sent out from the kitchen. Tourists will walk around the Plaza, and up and down Ocean Avenue, over sidewalks raised and cracked by tree roots, past the shops with the water bowls set outside for dogs. Surfers will surf at Carmel Beach then change out of their wetsuits behind the screen of their open car (or truck) doors. Sunsets will come and go, some brilliant, some not so.

The house that we rent will hold other occupants. Christine will come to oversee any necessary repairs and do the weekly cleaning. We will be a memory, just part of the cycle of each year. The owners will come in and out between other renters. Will any of these people hear our echoes? We spent New Year's Eve here with Todd and Christopher, and Christopher's parents, Marge and Jerry. Will they hear the echoes of that evening, or of the afternoon when Carole and Todd came by to pick up something that Christopher needed for Christmas dinner, and we cracked open the BIG bottle of Christmas Anchor Steam ale? Will they hear Lydia, Debra, and I who, while sitting in our accustomed spots on the sofas by the fireplace talking and laughing, complained just the tiniest bit about our respective husbands' foibles? Will they hear the residual echoes of my iPod playing samba and Bach and American songbook standards and some contemporary hits, always, always mixed with as much salsa and now bachata as I can sneak in? We leave our echoes behind, but they ride down Highway 101 with us as well. Back to Los Angeles, where the memories of the weeks we spent in our favorite place will be warmly recalled throughout the year; right up until we drive back into town next December. We'll drive down Ocean Avenue, just after midnight, where the Christmas tree will be blazing, and we will joyfully know that we have weeks ahead of us to spend with each other and with special friends in this magical place that we love. Le sigh. And, thank you for reading my blog.

Thar She Blows!

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Billy flew home this morning. Although, home is an ambiguous term at this juncture. He flew back to Los Angeles, to take care of some personal and business business (does that make sense?) for both of us. He'll be back in ten days. I suppose I could just as honestly say that he will be flying back home (here) at that time. For more and more, Carmel feels more like home than Los Angeles does.


Yesterday morning we took a long walk along the point, then around and up Scenic Drive. Then, in the late afternoon, we drove down to the beach to watch the sunset. It was slightly chilly, so we stayed in the car, looking for parking where we could watch the dogs playing on the beach. We didn't find parking where we wanted it, so we wound our way towards the point. And that was where Billy saw it -- the spume of water in a 90-degree trajectory from the ocean surface. Whales! As we watched, we conjectured that there were two of them -- one larger as evidenced by the larger spout of water. We stopped the car to watch, then crept along as they moved further south, into the cove between Carmel and Point Lobos.


Other people gathered at the ocean's edge to watch and point, including two men dressed in jeans, wearing athletic shoes -- one whom I recognized as Father John, the pastor at the Carmel Mission Basilica. I have heard him say Mass about, let's see, four times since I have been in Carmel this year, and many more over the past few years. He has a resonant speaking and singing voice, and it was kinda cool to see him in civies, enjoying a walk and the sight of the whales.


Finally, the sun had set, and, in the dimming light, we were losing track of the whales. So, we headed over to Rio Grill. Rio Grill is usually our first night spot (as those of you who have been following along should know, and this will be on the final), but we didn't get there on our first night after our return this week, as that was our wedding anniversary, which necessitated a different, more romantic (read: Italian) restaurant. So here we were on Billy's last night of Carmel -- for awhile, anyway.


We walked into the crowded bar (Happy Hour equals house cocktails priced at $3. Are you kidding me?), where we've been enjoying martinis for a decade or so, and happily spotted a few empty stools at the bar. But before getting to them, Billy noticed someone we know from town at one of the tables. We stopped for a brief schmooze. See! One more thing I love about this town. We spend only four to six weeks a year here, and yet we know people. We know Dennis, who used to work at New Masters Gallery. We know Celeste, who works at the cool tapas restaurant, Mundaka, and we know Gabe who owns it. We know Erica and Katie at Mission Ranch. It's all just, I don't know, kinda sorta perfect.


We had our martinis, shared an artichoke, a duck tamale, and another thing or two. When we left to go home (see! home!!!), I thought about what a perfect night it was. And how much I wished Billy wasn't flying to LA the next morning, and how very much I wished that we lived in this magical place ALL THE YEAR LONG.


We are not so naive as to think that the experience of year-long residence in Carmel would be the same as our annual retreats here. I mean, there probably are rude people here, and even some traffic. Probably not all people here say Merry Christmas or Happy New Year or even just good morning when they pass you on the street. If you worked hard at it, you could probably find a waitperson or a shop clerk who is in a bad mood. I know that living here wouldn't be all bliss all the time. But it would be better.


Meanwhile, I am grateful for the very large favor of being here now. People here often ask us if we live in town, and I always say for six weeks, we do! So, on my own here today, in the afterglow of a beautiful sunset with whales migrating in the foreground, and those good martinis at Rio Grill, I am thinking that, maybe, if the new year is really, really good to us, we will somehow find the way to be here for good. For that would be better than good. That would be very, very fine. The whales and I thank you for reading my blog. Really they do!