If You See This, I Love Your Life

Then and Now in Northern California

Everything always works out for the best.

That’s what my mother liked to say.

I was a quiet child. I was afraid of being judged and I often said nothing, in the way that saying nothing can be the same as lying.

I was good at holding in my feelings. I’d tend to my private collection of hurts and fears for weeks until they would spill out, resulting in tears at bedtime.

My mother, sitting at the edge of my bed would say, Why didn’t you tell me sooner, when I could have helped you?

I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand anything about myself. When I was empty, she’d hug me and promise:

Everything will work out in the end.

Agate Beach, Sue-meg State Park

This past June,

I woke up in California and for the first time in weeks, I knew right away where I was. Before I was even out of my dream, I heard wind and pounding surf, and knew I was on a bluff high above the Pacific, just north of Trinidad.

The day before, when my husband Eric and I arrived at Sue-meg State Park Campground, it was almost three o’clock and we were hungry. While he unhitched our travel trailer, I went inside to find lunch. It had been a while since we’d been food shopping and there wasn’t much in the fridge. I opened the cabinet and saw a tin of Trader Joe’s smoked mussels. I’d been looking at that tin in the trailer cupboard for two years.

The mussels had been a Christmas present from our daughter Kiki. That year, we’d all agreed we didn’t need more stuff, and decided to do a mostly edible Christmas. So we got each other things like chocolate and exotic olives, gourmet popcorn and Thai sauces.

Maybe it was the best

Christmas ever. That’s how I remember it. It was also Kiki’s last. After she died, nineteen days later, most of the gifts she gave us–the jars and packages of special foods–were still on the coffee table near the tree, or on the kitchen counter.

I guess we ate some of that food in the following months–a time that is now lost to the hazy blur of shock. The rest was put away; too special, too painful to consume.

“We’re eating these mussels now,” I said to Eric as I set the open tin on the table with a sleeve of crackers. “Keek would want us to. Otherwise, we’ll keep them for years and then have to throw them away.”

We each put a mussel on a saltine and touched the crackers together across the table like a toast.

“To Keek,” we said.

Along the trails at Sue-meg

We’d first visited Sue-meg

25 years ago–when it was called Patrick’s Point, in a time when anyone could still pull into a California state park without a reservation and get a campsite for a week or two.

We were entranced by wind-twisted trees clinging to sheer cliffs and narrow winding trails through thick foliage–almost tropical in its exuberance, with giant elephant-ear leaves, tangled vines and brilliant blossoms. The coast of Northern California has what is called a Mediterranean climate, with cool foggy summers and lush vegetation. The air is intoxicating; a mix of damp earth and grassy meadow, salt water and wildflowers.

On that visit, we struck up a campground friendship with another family. They were hippie farmers from Central California with three wild-haired feral kids, visiting the area to look at almond farms for sale. Almonds are going to be big, they told us.

I thought it sounded like a risky idea and felt worried for them. I didn’t realize they were like us, following their dream. Theirs was just a different dream. It would be a few years before anyone would hear of almond milk, and a decade before almond cheese, almond ice cream, and almond everything hit the stores. I hope they got their farm and caught that wave.

Smooth pebbles from Agate Beach

At that time,

three-year old Kiki was learning to make friends on the fly. We never knew where and when she’d find other kids to play with and she had to be bold when she had the chance.

On a walk through the campground, I was behind Kiki and one of the family’s older girls. I could hear her trying hard to impress the cool bigger girl. Keek pulled out what she thought was her most intriguing cocktail-party line: “Did you know I can scratch my ear with my foot, like a dog?”

I knew she was hoping for a big reaction but the girl said nothing and I saw Keek’s shoulders slump a little. But I was proud. My little girl, trying so hard to learn the art of conversation.

Kiki did end up being really good at making friends, a skill she carried through her whole life. But I don’t know if she ever used that dog line again.

Cliffs above the Pacific Ocean

Eric and I returned

to Sue-meg last June, hoping to recapture the joy we’d felt there as a carefree young family, but I worried that might be impossible. We had a week of perfect weather and walked and biked for miles through the park and along the trails that hug the high cliffs. We woke to foggy mornings with wind whipping up whitecaps on a steely ocean, and then basked in bright afternoons when the Pacific turned turquoise and the sun turned the hills to gold.

I didn’t feel sad at Su-meg. I felt proud of us for returning to a place that holds the best of who we were then. Idealistic and brave, hopeful and happy.

I talked to Kiki on my hikes.

“We’re here!” I shouted from the beach, above the roar of huge, crashing waves.
“We came back!”

Eric and I scattered some of her ashes in the ocean and let the wind take some from a high overlook.

I asked her, as I always do, “Keek, tell me—am I on a good path? Are we doing the right thing with our lives?

(Because sometimes this life—what we’re doing—feels too hard and a little crazy, and I’d really like an authoritative answer.)

I asked her to please give me a sign.

On the fourth or fifth day

Eric and I were returning on a trail from our favorite ocean overlook. I saw something written in chalk on a low wooden post:

If

you

see

this

I

love

your

life

And there it was. My answer.

I don’t know how miracles work. I just know that message was meant for us. The next day, a passing rain shower washed it away.

These days, I know

everything doesn’t always work out for the best. Or if it’s working out, it’s not in a way I’m capable of seeing. At least not in this lifetime.

In the months after Kiki died, I thought often of my mother and the way her words once had the power to comfort me.

I thought, my mom was wrong.

But really, how would I know?

What does it mean for things to “work out?” Does it mean we don’t feel pain or cry or have regrets?

I no longer try to see a reason for Kiki’s death. Maybe it does all work out in the end. I’m in no rush to get to the end, but I’m kind of excited to find out.⁜

Thank you for reading or listening. In the comments, please tell me something about your summer so far! I appreciate you being here.

Love 💛 Tina