SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER TWO - DAY TEN - July 25, 2020







Alas, my lasting contribution to literature may be the deft manner in which I’ve melded the ebullience of surfing with the desperation of Alzheimer’s. I conceived of Surfing Safari Summer last year as a way of getting Anna out of the house and stimulated by an environment we both enjoyed. Beaches are wide-open and full of safe sand and I could keep an eye on her from the waves and we both arrived home the better for it. This year the safaris have become more about my own sanity than Anna’s. These things go in phases, but she is not secure at the beach, does not take the same delight she did last year. She loses focus and forgets why she is there and, it seems, with whom. I feel confident of keeping her safe, but I just don’t know that she enjoys it anymore. Alzheimer’s patients get really into their food. I think that natural requirement is lodged elsewhere in the psyche than other, more voluntary faculties affected by the illness. Last summer we made a sport of visiting taco stands on the West Side and I think, now, the promise of the tacos kept her on board with the safaris. It is funny, because those culinary stops were written about as a kind of low-rent, simple pleasure in a world with more abundant and appealing options. Now that taco stops are off the table, they seem absolutely sumptuous. As things reopen and we return to a still-infected world, we will see all the small ways by which we have been impoverished.




Saturday’s Safari - which hung a ten-spot on this syncopated summer - came compliments of my 17-year-old, Wesley who, after doing his horn instruction, offered to watch his mom for a few hours… Clearly aliens had replaced my real son with a pod and I could only thank my lucky stars. The kid has struggled mightily with his mom’s decline, mostly doing his best to deny it is happening, only to explode at one of its inexorable and ugly manifestations, and to stay away from home. So it was big that he should step-up and help me out. The casualty rate for caregivers is not heartening and working collectively really serves to spread the workload well.

When I got to Marina del Rey, a man in the parking area asked me for a battery jump. I obliged. Things got complicated and, while I was helping him push his Honda UP an incline, I thought about how much easier it is to be an asshole.

That was preview to the surfing, which was awful. It was the kind of day one immediately realizes is for some exercising and prepping in anticipation of the next time they are lucky enough to see waves.



But the beach offers many splendors and I took off on a search for a swimsuit shoot disguised as a jog to the Venice Pier, and found one, as I knew I would.











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