this is our dining table, and the capitola wharf beyond.
i'm awash in memories here in capitola, from several eras of my life. this is the house in which i spent many summers when i was young. right out there is the beach where i played in the waves and the wharf from which i caught untold numbers of perch. i lived here briefly in 1970 with my first-born daughter when she was a baby. i remodeled a big chunk of the house in 1985. robin and i lived upstairs from 1989 to 1994. i rebuilt the garage in 1991.
it's fun and interesting to be here where we found each other. we're in the same two upstairs rooms we lived in for 5 years, about 370 square feet. through a BIG earthquake. we take the same walks we did back then. shop at the same stores. listen to the breaking waves at night lulling us asleep, as we did back then. we dined in the same restaurant, at the same table, where we dined on one of our first real dates, where we first professed our love for each other. of course, the restaurant has changed quite a bit in 18 years, but the food and service are still excellent, as is our love.
we drove up the coast to san francisco last weekend to see my youngest daughter and her boyfriend. i've spent time on almost every beach on that stretch of coastline. half moon bay is, well was back then, a 20 minute drive from where i lived in san mateo during high school. i spent many afternoons surf fishing and many nights drinking beer on those beaches.
robin has written about our tradition of remembering her father by throwing roses, this year rose petals, from the wharf where her family consigned his ashes to the sea. i always dedicate one rose, or petal, to my own father. his ashes, some anyway, were put into the ocean on his favorite island of maui. i figure it's all one ocean. this year as we were out there with our rose petals from port townsend i looked back down along the wharf and saw a collage of my own history. from a 6 year old me buying squid for bait and fishing thru the cracks in the planks to the stormy night robin and her sister, brothers, and mother scattered the ashes onto the water from the landing float which was pitching up and down at least 5 feet in the heavy surf.
the wharf has gone through many phases in my lifetime, as has the village of capitola. when i was young the wharf was a place for fishermen (fisherpeople?) and capitola was a slightly seedy vacation town. both the wharf and the village got seedier and more ragged around the edges in the late fifties and early sixties. now the wharf is a tourist attraction with mooring buoys where sailboats tie up in the summer and a wanna be chi chi restaurant. the village and surrounding bluffs are filling up with large, high-end mcmansions. the skiball and penny arcades of my youth are now tony restaurants and curio shops.
below is a picture of the house from outside on the same morning as the picture above, which looks out from the upstairs windows.
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