I’m feeling mighty
selfish these days. My aging parents are
making a huge, positive transition to a more simple life and all I can think
about is loss. I’m about to lose all physical
connections to my childhood paradise, the home where I grew up. Thanks to my parents’ hard work and my Mom’s
Life List, my siblings and I enjoyed a wonderful and amazing childhood in a
magical place called Browns Point.
Our days
often started out by sleepily munching on Cheerios while watching sea lions
frolic in the salty cove less than a hundred yards from the kitchen table. While it is not likely that they were the
same sea lions that barked past midnight the night before from the shipping
lane buoy far out in the middle of the channel, we blamed them anyway. Sounds can carry long distances on a quiet
night over the still water.
Although my
parents were very busy with careers, leaving before breakfast for a day of work
in the city, to return many hours later in time for a hot dinner that was always
put on the table by us kids, a big oak table set with eight sets of cutlery,
napkins and 7 full glasses of milk (Mom doesn’t like milk), a table with a view
of Caledonia Cove and all the creatures that lived above and below the surface
of the briny sea.
Our
childhood days were spent beach combing, lifting rocks to count the tiny crabs
as they scurried to find a new hiding place.
At low tide we would sneak up on gooey ducks, trying to grab their
leathery necks before they could squirt us in the face with their gritty spit
before digging down to safety. If we ran
out of things to do, we might challenge each other to a fire building contest
on the rocky beach, using only what we could find along the shore…and a couple
of matches. In my foggy memory I’m not
sure if those fires were parent sanctioned, or if they only took place when Mom
and Dad were safely 50 miles away at their jobs in Seattle.
Weather
permitting, we would take out one of the small boats to get a different view of
the world. We might row down to the
lighthouse to see who was playing at the park, or just float around near shore,
heads hanging overboard, silently watching the flounder dart around on the
sandy sea floor.
In the summer my brother would pack a lunch and take the rubber raft all the way out into the shipping lanes to ride the waves while they were still monstrous and churning from the giant international vessels coming in to port. From home, we younger kids would keep our eyes out for a large ship wake making its way to shore. If it looked like a doozy we might all dash down to the boat house to grab floating toys, splash into the water and ride the incoming surge of waves. Occasionally we would be rewarded with a screaming, bouncing wet ride that rivals a kiddy-roller-coaster, but more often the waves would be reduced to disappointing undulating lumps of water by the time they reached us.
In the summer my brother would pack a lunch and take the rubber raft all the way out into the shipping lanes to ride the waves while they were still monstrous and churning from the giant international vessels coming in to port. From home, we younger kids would keep our eyes out for a large ship wake making its way to shore. If it looked like a doozy we might all dash down to the boat house to grab floating toys, splash into the water and ride the incoming surge of waves. Occasionally we would be rewarded with a screaming, bouncing wet ride that rivals a kiddy-roller-coaster, but more often the waves would be reduced to disappointing undulating lumps of water by the time they reached us.
On warm
summer days we would cool off by swimming, splashing and floating upon the murky,
seaweed ridden water while trying to dodge the stinging jelly-fish. Only once did one yellow jelly sneak up on me
to wrap its tentacles around my ankle – the pain was indescribable, but the
screaming and ear-piercing sobs were a pretty good indication of my
discomfort. With the absence of the
dreaded stinging creatures, we would
still last only a few minutes in the bone-chilling water before we would be
ready to bask in the sun on the warm sand.
During the cool gray Pacific
Northwest days that are so common we might drag out the heavy black wet suits
from the basement. We typically
struggled for a half an hour to pull those tight rubbery pants and jackets on,
and even longer to get them off once we were water-logged and wrinkled. We would be rewarded for wrestling the suits
onto our bodies with hours of swimming and effortless floating in the cove
without a single shiver. The lucky kid
was the one who called dibs on the pants with no hole in the crotch. The unlucky would be wearing the split pants and
would feel quite a shock upon entering the 55 degree water.
I could go on forever, but I know
that life moves on. Although we will
lose our old creaky house, our rocky beach and our endless view of the Puget
Sound and islands, we won’t have lost everything. As I write this, I realize that I have
fabulous memories that fill me from the bottoms of my barnacle-scraped feet to
the tips of my sandy, salty hair. And I
still have my Mom and Dad, who made this childhood happen, all snuggled up in
their new cozy condo on the hill.
Tippy-top: The view from our kitchen window....and living room, and bedrooms...
Top: The view to the left - Browns Point Lighthouse that flashed into my bedroom every night.
Bottom: View to the right - Dash Point "vacant beach".
We lived smack in the middle.
