Morning Beach Walk--The Regulars

           

This morning on Del Mar Beach, I saw 5 brown mallard ducks, 1 dead seagull, 1 live seagull, a twisted rope of kelp and seaweed at least 20 feet long, with a root structure at least 18 inches in diameter.  The sky was crystal blue.  The water smooth as silk, with rolling waves, was dotted with surfers. 

I walked past old couples, young couples, singles: a middle-aged man in an LSU t-shirt, stretched over his solid belly, with a baseball cap on backwards; two athletic-looking middle-aged women, super tan, one in a tennis skirt, the other in running shorts, talking the whole way; a man yakking on his cell phone as he walked quickly on the beach, his woman at his side and keeping stride; and a young couple with their twin white-blond, toddler daughters in their pink bathing suits—the father in his board shorts, no shirt, tattoo between the shoulder blades, longish brown hair pulled back under another backwards baseball cap, and the mother a bleached blond in cut-off jean shorts and a bikini top with a tattoo on her calf, and their 2 mini-pinschers staked to the beach and watching their every move as they played with the girls in the shallow water.

I had seen the couple yesterday morning, walking on the cliff above the beach, with the girls strapped to their chests like shields, arms and legs dangling (in complete over-extension—parents, please stop doing this to your children!), the girls’ faces expressionless as the father complained about something someone had done wrong to him, and the mother followed him, “uh-huhing” along the way.  When I passed the mother and the second girl, she looked at me with a piercing, cut-right-through-me gaze that I would have expected to see on a 100-year-old, not the slightest bit of little girl in her face.  Today, when I passed them on the beach, they gave no sense of recognizing me, and both little girls again looked blank-faced and expressionless, even as they played in the water and toddled in the surf on their chubby little legs.  They looked so cute in their little pink suits, and so little girl-like in the way they played, but nothing showed on their faces.  Their mother smiled at them and talked with delight to the father about the way they moved in the water, but the girls didn’t laugh or smile—they were very serious about what they were doing.

As I came up the cliff from the beach, many surfers passed me.  A middle-aged woman carrying a huge paddleboard like it was nothing.  An older guy with his wet suit pulled down to the waist following right behind her with a surfboard.  And 3 young guys with wet suits down to their narrow waists, well-muscled, tanned chests, scampering down with their surfboards, as easy as could be.

Up on the cliffs on the path to and from the beach, I passed a man who I’d seen surfing many times—a short, solid, athletic guy who looks like he’s in his 60s, silver hair, well-built, never smiles, serious, good surfer, reminds me of Terence Stamp—this time with his wife and dog, and they looked perfect for him:  the dog one of those solid, little brown dogs, about the size of a pug, but without the pug face—an open kind of cute but pugnacious face and with pointed ears.  His wife was well-put-together and looked prosperous and intelligent. 

I saw a few other regulars too: the older, slouched guy in khakis and a dark green polo shirt walking his 2 dachshunds—he always wears the same clothes and always smiles, but doesn’t speak, and the young, super-buff, well-muscled Asian guy, who I only seem to ever see as he is crouching down to pick up poop from the black lab he walks.  

When I left for my walk, the sky was overcast--the marine layer--then the sun cut through it all, bright, bright, bright, and the waves just keep coming, like the people.  We're all regulars here.