sun days

We live in the southernmost corner of the West Edge on a cul-de sac street that runs down a ridge between two canyons. If I walk up the hill to the end of our block, I can see the Pacific Ocean way off in the distance, and I can drive to the Mexican border in half an hour.

 The sun comes up a little later here at Casa de Swell than it did when we lived a few miles west on the coast, or it seems that way to me. The house and garden are snugged into a steep hill to the east with more and taller hills further on until the land drops to the desert and California slides into Arizona. The sun has to climb high, high before it’s visible, and by then it’s thrown a lot of light at whatever is in the sky that morning, taking its time. It has all day, after all. Things dance to a sunrise.

 The sun sets in the ocean, of course, plunk, like a penny in a fountain, there one second and not the next, its trumpeting, dying day flaming against whatever clouds are around a minute or two later: blood orange and ‘seventies hot pants pink that darkens to purple sky and indigo sea. Gaudy Vegas women, the sunsets here.

 Sunrises are softer. The glare-y bit doesn’t last as long and isn’t as blinding, as face-burning hot. Dialed down, the nuclear fusion is just getting started, not flinging molten lava solar flares around just yet. A flare is not lava, you know; it just looks like that in pictures. It’s not a thing even, like boiling iron or even boiling gas; it’s an explosion of electromagnetic radiation that shows up in radio waves and x-rays and gamma rays. How telescopes can see a picture of something – spewing, arcing lava-like stuff that breaks like a wave and drops in hot drabs, falling back to the sunsea – a picture of something that isn’t a solid or liquid or gas I can’t imagine. So I skip the science class and imagine the clouds are feeling the warmth and changing colors in response, like toast that browns under the glowing coil, flowers that open to catch it, hold it.

 People are gaga for sunsets. When we lived a block from the beach we saw them every day, walking in front of the house and across the street, heading west like tan zombies to stand on the bluff for a few minutes as the round sun flattened and drowned on the horizon. Sometimes we went too and stood in the jagged line above the sand and sandstone, everyone’s west-facing skin golden and lit like watchers at a campfire. The temperature drops noticeably when it’s over; a thin chill seeps off the water and wraps your ankles. Time to go. It’ll be dark soon.

 I like sunrises more, and mornings and coffee. I like things at the start of the day, people stirring, eyes opening, sleepy smiles at what’s ahead. There have been enough endings in my life recently; I’ll stick with beginnings.

who rocked my boat? (or how I got my oar back)

Someone – if I could remember who, they’d be so damn sorry – mentioned the idea of downsizing. You know, selling your nice, comfortable house with its shaded patios and pretty gardens and moving into something … else. Mr. Forte and I began, calmly at first, to discuss this. We said things like “less maintenance” and “smaller” and “simpler.” Because I love change and a challenge, I was off and running and soon focused on a townhouse being built near Balboa Park (and Mr. Forte’s office downtown) with three swanky, modern floors, a light well, underground parking, and an elevator. Turns out my spouse was picturing something … else. We’ve been married almost forever and have learned, painfully, that each of us is a control freak who hates sharing. As a result, I take care of My Stuff and he His Stuff (which is Our Stuff divided up into who's best with it), and we don’t question decisions made by each other in those domains. Suggestions and “good ideas” are not welcome. One of us would have to really screw up royally for the other to insist on invading that space; it has happened only twice in thirty years. Mostly, we just bob along like two small boats on the same slow river. But there we were, contemplating a Major Life Change. It made sense to do it: we live thirty+ miles from the city; Mr. Forte still commutes to work, but he’s 86 and hates the drive; I can’t dig up acreage and climb ladders and haul things around like I used to, so we’re paying for labor; the days of putting on family parties for thirty or forty people are long gone since everyone has grown up and mostly moved away. Except for sharing the obsessive control trait, we couldn’t possibly be more different. Mr. Forte is a plodder who puts things off, mulls things over, changes his mind, thinks big-picture (like a good lawyer), and feels zero time pressure. If I were snarky, I’d add that he knows everything about lawyering and flying an airplane but almost nothing about anything else at all in the whole world. On the other hand, I dive into a problem, am a whiz at research, make lists, am a quick weigher of pros and cons, hate having undone, half-assed projects on my to-do list, and am notoriously impatient. See the problem yet? Complicating matters is another piece of real estate that we own, a rental that’s been squatted in by indulged family members for decades. Do we sell A and move into tiny, trashed B after spending vast sums of money to make it Cool Beachy B, then sell B and move … somewhere else? Fix B a little and rent it to strangers with money? Sell A and move to Swanky Condo where Mr. Forte can’t hide and never talk to neighbors? Sell A and move to nicely redone smallish house in Point Loma that costs half of what A would sell for but (as I found out) twice as much as Mr. Forte thinks we should spend for new digs? Drag our heels for months and let these possibilities bounce around in our heads like too many squeaky, rubbing-against-each-other, helium balloons in the back seat of a car? Wait, I know!! Let’s argue uselessly about this for weeks! Let’s think we’ve resolved it only to have someone (not saying who but it sure wasn't me) dredge it all up again so life became "Groundhog Day." Great! What a plan! Hide the knives first, OK? After exhausting every conceivable nit-picking detour of this tangled web – and ourselves – we finally decided to do the least expensive, most rational, least disruptive of all options: Kick lounger out of B, fix B, rent to responsible adult(s), stay happily in A, not pay vast sums to the tax man and stop fighting. True to form, once I knew home would still be home, I whipped into Get It Done gear and finished some projects here at the too-remote homestead that had been on hold while we were staring daggers at each other. Took down ugly framed mirrors in master bath, painted walls a lovely taupe-ish grey, put up right-sized frameless wall mirrors that float and expand the now-uncluttered space; ordered cheap, cute, coral Anthropologie curtains, simple (cheap) iron rods and hardware, and the best curious rabbit tiebacks; found a rustic red and beige vase and some snazzy colored boxes to hide Q-tips and vanity crap in; spent $30 to get next-day delivery on the window stuff. It will all be done by the weekend, took less than ten days, and now I officially love the bathroom. Apologies have been offered and accepted. Some wariness lingers, some appreciation too: of talent and wisdom and things that cannot, by their nature, change. Clocks don’t run backward, not for any of us. My next project is the sturdy wooden gate at the entrance to Casa de Swell’s front courtyard, the elm tree’s patio, the way inside. Its sun-damaged timbers need sanding and priming and a coat of protective paint to help it through the next few years, and I found just the color this afternoon: a blue-green-grey named Boxwood (that isn't the color of boxwood) that is perfect with the many garden greens, the adobe, the red roof tile. Colors that complement; balance restored.