My Cousin & San Francisco
I used to travel to San Francisco a few times each year for pleasure. I had a cousin who lived there and would let me crash on her couch. She was an artist who lived among antique typewriters, old furniture, and knick-knacks that were as organized as they were eclectic. She didn’t have a television, and she ate her meals on carefully curated thrift-store Victorian porcelain. Both bedrooms had been converted into studios, and she and her boyfriend—a writer whom I really liked—slept on a mattress in the kitchen. Her tiny front yard was overgrown with flowers, and on the porch sat a weathered couch and two wooden chairs, their yellow and orange paint chips barely clinging on. It was my kind of place.
When I wasn’t at the St. Francis Yacht Club and she wasn’t working, we’d visit shops in San Francisco that sold her work, explore a hodgepodge of galleries in Berkeley, and talk for hours over whiskey at Vesuvio Cafe. I loved my life back then. Having a cousin you love, and who you know loves you, is one of the greatest gifts in life. We are polar opposites in every way; maybe that’s why our relationship works.
On one trip, we hopped in my rental and drove south on the Pacific Coast Highway with no agenda. Our first stop was the Half Moon Bay Ritz-Carlton, where I showed her my favorite place to smoke cigars. We buzzed around 17-Mile Drive, took photos of Bixby Bridge, and got ice cream in Big Sur. Who knows what we talked about, but it was pleasant and engaging, as always.
Eventually, she moved to Oregon and went back to college in her 40s. Gone are our carefree days of drinking wine in Sonoma and talking late into the night. I miss smoking cigars and reading on her front porch while she worked in her studio. I miss the ease of popping into the city to meet friends. I just miss that period of life. Things weren’t easy, but they were lighter, at least in 20/20 hindsight.
On a subsequent trip after she moved, I found a little beach town south of the city called Pacifica. I had never been, and it looked charming, so I booked a room in a motel on the beach. I needed a place where I could hear the ocean and meditate without distraction. Northern California is where I go to rest.
Every night before bed, I’d open the sliding glass door of my oceanfront room and let in the remnants of windswept surf and the noise of violent waves. I’d turn up the heat and get tucked in under a cheap duvet, letting the cold ocean air cleanse my lungs and reset my sympathetic nervous system. My room would be freezing when I woke up.
In the morning, I’d meditate to the pounding of the surf. Afterwards, I’d walk along the beach to Soul Grind Coffee Roasters for my morning cup. I’d either watch the sunrise—a dreamy mix of lavender, honey, and cantaloupe—or sit beneath an overcast sky of silverly charcoal. But no matter the mood of Mother Nature, dozens of surfers bobbed on their boards while I smoked my pipe and enjoyed the warmth of a coffee in my hands.
When life flusters me, I close my eyes and let my mind flip between images of those mornings—I hear the sea, I taste the briny air, and I smell the burning tobacco. Sometimes, it’s to the spectacular sunrises; other times, it’s to the greyness. But in the end, it’s always water—the harmony of waves, the permanence of tides, and the memories of a childhood on the Pacific Ocean.
