Turtle Lessons

          I trudged along the beach. Doug, Puck-like, picked up and showed me another and another miniature shell, delighted by their sizes, colors, patterns.
          Driving south toward San Diego, sometimes on 101 through the beach towns, sometimes on 5, he'd told many an anecdote of a friend who lived there, a watering hole on this street, a job in that place. I'd listened at first, trying to take it all in. Then I half listened, politely. Then, I became annoyed.

          "Why didn't you ever move back to San Diego?" I asked. If I were a spiny anemone, my barbs would stick Doug when he tried to pick me up.
          "Because it's all the same."
          I jumped into the opening. "I can't stand San Diego. It's all the same. Every town is the same. The weather is always the same. It's boring."
          Ever the optimist and determined to bring the smile back to my face, Doug pointed out La Jolla cove. I, of course, stubbornly tried not to understand where he was pointing, and only after multiple questions for clarification did I acknowledge I got it. Deep into my two-year-old mode, I began to feel better when Doug had trouble parallel parking and when we—well, I, anyway, Doug tending to be less vindictive—could feel superior to the silly people watching the over-population of seals collected on the rocks.
          "Did you ever come here with Nikki?" Nice try. I was not going to reflect. 

          I looked at the small park on the cliff, similar to numerous such parks along the southern California coast. I was certain I had not walked here with Nikki in her motorized wheelchair, the ventilator rhythmically pumping. "No," I said shortly.

          Calm began to seep into me as we watched parents, children, and dogs examine the life in the tidepools below. I admired the fathers pushing strollers or carrying a baby in a front pack along the path and the pregnant mothers in the new fashions that acknowledge pregnancy rather than attempting to conceal it in a tent.
          As we watched a man in a wetsuit dive under large waves, I commented, "Those waves don't look very small to me." The point of the visit to La Jolla cove was to show me how it was just the type of placid water I'd enjoy kayaking in. We watched as the man grabbed the next wave and body-surfed to shore.
          "I've never seen it like this," Doug said. "This swell is huge." Aha—I could feel justifiably smug.
          We watched a couple sans wetsuits wade into the surf, then begin to swim toward the buoy. I wondered, just as I always do when I swim in open water, what was beneath, waiting to nibble at their toes. As if hearing my thoughts, Doug said, "The only supposed citing of a great white here was a hoax when a guy faked his death and disappeared."
          Adding to the sense of being in a Baz Luhrman film—a collage of high surf, swimmers, walkers in boots and sweaters, moms and dads and children and dogs tidepooling—a large turtle lumbered rather gracefully across the lawn. Children and adults flitted alongside, like water hitting hot grease. The owner could have made a tidy sum charging for pictures, were he not there to enjoy the day and the smiles, with his hard-shelled friend who perhaps doubled, as Doug surmised, as a chick magnet.
         Walking back to the car, I pointed to the building at the top of the hill. "We had lunch there once, when Nikki was first sick. It's where I first realized the importance of handicapped facilities. Sara and I couldn't lift Nikki from the toilet seat." Laughing had been a release for our frustration, sadness, and embarrassment for Nikki, as we had to leave the stall door wide open throughout. The memory started again the movie in my mind of sixteen-year-old Sara pushing her mother's first wheelchair—before the motorized one, before Nikki had a ventilator to breathe for her—driving it almost fiercely between the closely-spaced tables, bringing the patrons to a surprised pause.
          "Maybe that's why I don't like San Diego. All my memories here are associated with Nikki." 

          Doug agreed maybe that was it.
          We went to a birthday party for a friend that evening. Fifty-five and Alive was her mantra, since she'd had a heart attack a few months before and is now doing great, cause for celebration.
          The next day we met Ron, Nikki's widower, and his girlfriend, Connie, for lunch. Ron is moving on; he is relaxed; he laughs more. I know that Nikki is smiling: she so wanted Ron to move on after she died.
          On our next visit, I'll ask Ron to take me to the memorial bench he placed for Nikki by the lagoon. Maybe when I remember walking beside Nikki, to the accompaniment of the wheelchair's whir and the ventilator's whoosh, I'll feel the warm sun and cool breeze more than the melancholy.