Lizards. A Lifeguard. This Town I Love, And Want To Leave

I stand at the end of the road, where the asphalt crumbles into jagged chunks above the sandy soil. Two lizards run towards each other, emerging from underneath opposing shrubs. I watch as they freeze like statues, before doing push-ups at one another. A girl lizard must be watching from a clandestine spot, weighing her options. I lean on the chainlink fence with signs warning me not to go any further, lest the bluff collapses with me and the lizards into the Pacific below. A man and woman walk up next to me, speaking a language I do not recognize. They, too, watch the wild reptiles pulsing with competitive juices. I wonder if they have lizards wherever they are from; their excitement tells me these little dueling dragons are new to them.

To my right, tacked onto an old fence, is a large collage of photos. Young faces. Colors so bright. Silly smiles, surfboards, friends with arms draped around each others’ shoulders in moments long gone. The images are laminated, to withstand the elements: the southern California sun, the salt from the water below, the wind of waves that never cease. Next to the large poster, are dates, bookends of a life. He was just 24 years old, and now already gone nearly five years. A pang thumps in my throat. I remember hearing about this tragedy. A local lifeguard, rising in the tide of a beautiful young life, days spent basking on the sunny decks of towers, saving the struggling swimmer and the kids stung by jellyfish, met his own exit from this life in the waters off of Mexico when the fins of his surfboard became a weapon against his neck. For a moment, I feel him close by on the breeze, forever a strong man, with everything and nothing ahead. I swallow the earthly sadness of his passing, and imagine he is just on the other side of the lowering sun.

A father and son jog below on the beach, barefoot in the hem of where the water surges against the sand. What a nice way to spend an Easter Sunday afternoon, I think to myself. With your father. With my father. Though we wouldn’t have been running — we simply were never that kind of family — we might have been sitting on a bench above the water, looking for dolphins. Or we might have been at home, with the Padres game on the TV while my mother cooked. Friends, who were more like family, might have been over, dipping chips into salsa, or eating deviled eggs while we waited for a feast to be served. I smile, thinking of the good life, the good memories this place has deposited within me. My dad floats away like a ghost. The friends have moved on too, some leaving their bodies behind, and others simply relocating to far away places that make them feel like they are gone for good. But I am still here, above the same ocean, with the pelicans overhead and the old school that is now an art center to my left.

My sons are nearly grown now…one off at work, the other with the girl who has stolen his young heart. My husband is somewhere on a run, immune to the hills and sun that stop me from joining him. Wave after wave crashes below me and I can’t help but feel how my life has changed, not for the better and not for the worse. Just changed. The cast of characters who have left the stage, the new ones who hold beautiful space but are also arriving in the middle of the show. An ache sits inside of me, a longing for a time and place that will never come again. And also a hope, a living heartbeat that says, It’s time for a change…this will be fun!

The lizards circle one another once more, before one skitters off below a heap of coastal sage with its purple flowers. Was this defeat, or victory? Is the lizard left out on the bluff above the ocean the winner, or is he just afraid to move? Did the one who ran away find what he was looking for somewhere else? Who is free and who is stuck? The foreign couple has left. An older leathery man with an unleashed dog stands over by the photos of the young lifeguard. He tells the story of the young man’s passing to a trio of teenage girls who have walked up. I see him make a hand motion near his neck, and the girls’ expressions recoil. Mexico, is the only word I can make out from where I stand.

I turn back to the ocean. So much has changed here. And so much has stayed the same. The Easter lily I planted when my boys were little comes back to see me every spring. The waves have never taken a break. The clouds that lay down like a gauzy blanket above me remind me of my whole life in this town. All of the Easters, the school days, the parties, the funerals, the leaving that I have witnessed. Somehow it all breaks my heart and fills me with thankfulness in one fell swoop.

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