Our beach house is my favorite of all places. For more than 11 years we have returned to it, in good times and bad and so we will again.

It’s right on the water on a private beach near Santa Barbara and it’s as much our home as anywhere we’ve ever been.

We sleep with the tall windows wide open so all you can hear is the crash of the waves. Mostly what I do during those 8 or 9 days is just sit in my chair on the deck, in the sun or under my green umbrella. That’s it.

We like to go into Santa Barbara and get fresh spot prawns and other delicacies and I put them on the grill and we share a good bottle of wine. Ive never slept better than there.

When the tide comes in, I can feel the sea spray on my face and when it goes out, I watch the tiny crabs scrabble across the sand. 

There are dolphins and surfers and the occasional happy beach dog carrying a driftwood stick but usually when we are there the beach itself is quiet and so am I.

I have a seagull, Jonathan, who returns to us each year and knows me by sight. I know him because he has a small hole in his right foot. He’s no ordinary bird. He’s my bird. He never shared with me how he got that injury in all our time together though there have been many days on that deck when we sat quietly next to each other and I expected him to tell that tale. Perhaps he doesn’t want to explain it and I don’t pry.

We have an understanding, Jonathan and I. I bring him fresh croissants in the morning and shrimp at dusk and he watches over me and asks nothing of me. But he always returns.

Mostly, we are silent as I sit under my umbrella and he on his rail. I suspect he’s seen a lot in his years, my bird and when the sun finally starts to set and all the other gulls fly away, he’s always the last to go to wherever it is he goes when he leaves me.

Often at night I like to take a blanket and glass of wine and go back out to my deck, when you can see nothing at all, but you can hear the waves and that furious sound, crashing on the rocks.

One night I was staring into the dark, no moon or stars- and spotted a light. A flicker, many miles out to sea. And then again. I wanted to be sure so I held my own lantern up and flashed my light with my hand and waited.

And another flash.

This time I held my lantern higher and swung it hoping I could really be seen and that yellow light swung back at me too. When looking to the far left, I could see the cars from the Pacific Coast Highway but this was out at sea.

I sat there surrounded by the sound of the waves in blackness and he came to life in my mind.

He’s a fisherman, a thinker and more.

I imagine he takes his boat out to sea again late at night because he understands it better then. There is a clarity to the night sea and it speaks to him as it does to me. He looks and looks and sometimes finds himself and other harder truths that are easier to see in the dark.

His beloved wife of 30 years falls asleep waiting for him but she never questions why he must go or if he will return. They have two kids grown up and gone and neither heard the call but maybe they come home for Christmas. He works hard but worries how fast the days go by now. And he thinks about that one time long ago. There are things that go unsaid.

I think he’s sitting there in his boat, listening to the waves, just as I’m doing now.

Does he recognize me, my lantern waving? Would he know me in the dark?

I’m surrounded by the sound of the waves in deep blackness and find comfort in knowing he’s out there too, my fisherman and that he saw me.

And so we sit for a while with it, just the two of us.

Later, I flash my lantern again and there is no response.