A beautiful summer evening on Oceano Dunes. The tide is reaching in toward the middle of the road now yet the campers keep coming as the quads, the dirt bikes, and the ATVs vie for equal time on the road. Kids squeal as they run through the surf and the snowy plover and the gulls share the shore line with the pelicans that so helpfully guide fisherman to fruitful fishing spots. We have been here for more than two weeks now and will spend one last night on the beach before moving south along Highway 101. We have walked the beach searching for sand dollar riches and the perfect rock and shell; skimmed boarded along the tide line and boogie boarded the waves. We have taken our snow board down the dune, constructed sand castles along the shore, and curled up with a good book and a hot cup of coffee inside the warm comfort of the RV.
Yes, the transmission is now a done deal. Much money and time later but it is finished and we are once again together in the RV. No more motels out of necessity alone. It was rough going for a while there. Not only the long stint of motel time but the time of separation for my partner and me. He stayed in town with the RV while I stayed with my daughter and her family in the motel down the peninsula wondering if the work would ever really get done and we would be rolling again. We motel squatters finally took it upon ourselves to pack up before the RV was ready and we hooked up the trailer and hit the road. We drove from Belmont, CA to Pismo Beach, CA, to Oceano Dunes State Recreational Area to camp and wait for the RV and the rest of our party to join us. The $10 a night stay on the beach sure beat the climbing cost of the motel.
Our time here on the dunes is coming to an end and we will be moving on. We will move down the coast toward Ventura then inland to San Bernadino County. That is where our caravan will split up. My daughter and her family will be heading east toward Kansas while my partner and I will be heading south toward San Diego and Imperial Counties. We have some business to take care of here in California as we contemplate where we would like to settle next. Some places that we are think of are Ferdinanda Beach, Florida and Folly Beach, North Carolina. But we are still in the contemplative stage so who knows. Until then we will keep on boondocking on.
I will miss my daughter and her family. Just the way I miss my other children. How is it that we become parents knowing that someday we will have to watch our children leave and just as we are not given any lessons in becoming parents we are given no lessons in overcoming the sadness of watching them go. I have four children. I loved being a mother. I still do. Maybe I wasn’t the best of mothers. But I don’t think I was the worst either. I don’t live up to the expectations of my oldest children, maybe not of my youngest either. I don’t live close enough to my second and I am too close to my third and fourth. I don’t know how to even it all out. I don’t love one more than the other though I do know that I am understood, and accepted for myself, more by some than by others. I would like to have adult relationships with my children, I would like to have loving open relationships with my grandchildren. Each night I pray for the same thing, I pray for the good health, the safety, and the happiness of my children and my grandchildren. Each night I will continue that same prayer.
