Back to the Rain

Christmas morning, Tom and I left the grimy and melting snow of Seattle to spend five days in Los Angeles with his sister, Linda, and her family.  To toy with us, the weather in LA was cold and rainy when we landed with winds whipping the leaves off the palm trees.  Grateful to be out of the snow and sub-freezing temperatures, we found even a wet fifty degrees welcome.  Our Christmas dinner, compliments Jean-Pierre, was evocative of the cold Puget Sound we’d left behind, featuring a large tray of fresh, raw Hama Hama oysters from Hood Canal.  I ate five; lightly spritzed with a lemon wedge, they tasted like standing on the beach at Harstine island and breathing deeply. 

With great kindness, by the next day, the rain and cool gave way to L.A.’s more typical conditions:  blue, blue skies and sun.  I have no idea what the temperatures were actually, but the radiance of the California sun bored into my bones, giving me a hit of vitamin D I hope will fend off the Washington winter blues until the sun returns up north, say about May…if we’re lucky.  The Boscs, too, were kind, traipsing about the beach and hill tops with Tom and me as we attempted to saturate ourselves with sunshine.  Sunday afternoon, Linda, Pierre, Tom and I stood atop the remarkably green hills of the Topanga Canyon Wilderness, shielding our eyes as we looked southwest to the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean as it charged and tugged at the beaches of Santa Monica.  Turning 180 degrees, we could see mansions and villas and odd, old little cabins pocking the waves of forested hillsides.  The two views challenged my long held impression of L.A. as a lot of concrete at the edge of the sea. 

Sunny and seventy, it was still Christmas though.  We opened presents, laughed at stories, and toasted the holidays together.  Those are things we do regardless of our location in late December.  While Christmas marketing leans to romantic images of cottages with snow to the window sills and sleighs pulled by prancing brown steeds over downy fields, I think I’m sold on Christmas a few degrees south.  The dive-bombing hummingbirds that live in the hedge along the Boscs’ deck and a bevy of just-ripe lemons sent home with us, the embodiment of the sun we left behind Monday night, do much more for my spirit than the drip, drip, drip that now remains of our Christmas white.

It’s been gray all day, and only now beginning to rain.  Ruby is restless, waiting for me to finish this entry so she can go out and play.  Rain, snow or sun, Ruby is happy in all weather.  I am going to try to learn that from her.  Lesson one:  go outside and chase cats.