Enroute

Rainbow over Castroville, California

Migraines are unpleasant at best. I’ve suffered from them throughout my adult life, but the last few years I finally seemed to have learned better how to avoid them, or at any rate, I only get them rarely. The end of our first week in California, I woke up with a doozy.

I won’t describe it all except to say it was very painful, and I veered between being able to hold a light conversation, and having to run to a bathroom. The vice grip on my head is particularly annoying when we are staying with friends and every moment is precious. Ahead of us that day we were leaving our longtime friends warm embrace where we had spent the previous two days, had a breakfast scheduled with more dear friends, many miles to drive to our next destination, and then time with our next set of lifelong friends. I did not want to be ill for any of it!

After pacing around the house where we were staying for awhile as it was pouring rain outside, I managed a few hours in the morning to have several conversations and as it tuns out, laughter is great medicine! Thankfully, this migraine was mostly over after a day and a half. Since they can last three days or so and wipe me out completely, I felt pretty relieved when I was able to rejoin my friends in person again the afternoon of the second day.

One of my tricks that seems to work is to go for a walk outside. Thankfully, the second afternoon of my migraine, we were in Monterey, California, so we went for a long walk on an endless, deserted beach. The fresh winter winds blew through my head; the salty air, the swooping pelicans, the hyper sandpipers racing up and down the sand at the waves edge, and the strangely quiet flock of gulls resting on the dune were all the tonic I needed. Plus of course the rhythm of walking through the soft sand that took effort and forced me to breathe consistently and with effort.

Empty Seaside Beach, Monterey, California

And wouldn’t you know it: on our way back from that beach, when we stopped to pick up some fish for dinner, we saw that it was the first day of Dungeness Crab season, and they had just cooked up the first batch of crabs caught that morning. It was a sign! If you missed last week’s post, it referred to my fondness for Dungeness Crab:

Is home linked to food?

Not only was I ‘back’ and headache-free, I had crab to look froward too! Yep, by the end of dinner, not only was I full, but I was feeling much, much better!

We’ve had lots of other small adventures along the way, but mostly we’ve been filling ourselves up to the brim enjoying our longtime friends and family. We had a fascinating walking tour of Alfred Hitchcock’s San Francisco, where we saw many of the locations where he shot his movies. We followed up by watching Vertigo a few nights later.

Grace Cathedral in the morning light (site was used by Alfred Hitchcock), an alley on Nob Hill and Chinatown, all in San Francisco.

I’ve been going through boxes of old family photos that had been stored for me, and now I need to finally sift through and organise the voluminous quantities. There are some fantastic gems, however, and as I sort, I have been moving from the distant past to the present as I get lost in memories. I’ll then meet a friend for a coffee and get grounded back in today. While we talk and walk, I’m soaking up the smells of wet eucalyptus and bay and redwood forest duff. Or the salty surf of the beach. It’s heart-filled and heady stuff.

The light with all the rain and storms that have been blowing through is amazing, and I keep taking out my little iphone hoping to capture glimpses of what I’m seeing. Mostly I’m trying to capture just a hint of what we are doing most days or places so that I can recall the joy I was feeling at that time. And there is SO much joy spending time with longtime friends.

That shared cultural familiarity floods back when I return to California and spend time with friends and family here. It is so EASY: the words mean the same, the memories come from similar, if not shared, events. The music, the food, the political context, the social expectations during most of our lives are all shared, and that makes everything we talk about come from a seemingly shared consciousness.

This is not to say that it is difficult talking to people from different places and eras, I just need to remember there is no shared knowledge of the context. Of course that is what makes living and travelling in other places so very interesting! I LOVE learning about how others view the world, and especially how they came to think that way based on where and how they grew up in the world.

But sometimes, the joy of being known is a kind of relaxation that is particularly needed. And I enjoy that time through and through, every moment I can.

Harbour seals relaxing (like me!) at Point Lobos State Park, Carmel, California

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Until next week, and another post from the wilds of Southern California,

xoxo Sabrina