When you have several children, those blissful moments of silence and peace are few and far between. So when my husband and I got a rare (read: the first time in several years) occasion of alone time, we stared at each other in disbelief. Like a couple of prisoners on parole, we didn’t know what to do next.
There’s a big world out there, and suddenly all those things we can’t do with kids were within our reach. We could dine out and completely savor our food while we took in an ocean view. We could go to a movie theater—a place we haven’t been in 10 years. We could, ahem, “talk” all night, like newlyweds. Or we could go to an actual 21-and-older bar and have drinks—sitting at the bar. Oh, the possibilities.
Our overnight reprieve started out in Santa Cruz, and the plan was to take a leisurely drive down Highway 1 along the Big Sur coast to get back home. We stayed at the Terrace Motel in Santa Cruz in a suite overlooking the ocean.
We hung out on the boardwalk—which is famous to us as the structure featured in the ’80s movie The Lost Boys—and searched for vampires. That chick right there? She’s one. That guy with the grizzled beard and the one wandering eye dancing to nothing in particular? He’s definitely one. We shared a deep-fried Twinkie (absolutely so good and worth clogging an artery), then went back to our room—slightly tipsy, I’ll admit—and had a wonderful night’s sleep.
When you wake up to the Nickelodeon Channel blaring Spongebob, with an empty beer bottle at your bedside, broken potato chips all over your undies, and part of the waffle cone from a Choco Taco ice cream stuck to the side of your face, it’s a good indication you partied pretty hard. Right?
“Last night was a blast,” I told Ron, chipping waffle cone from my cheek.
“Can you believe we were eating chips and drinking a beer at—wait a minute. Whoa. I think it was 8:45 when we got in bed,” Ron said. “That’s so sad.”
We hadn’t had that much to drink, but the night was slow in coming back to me. Then I remembered how we had talked about closing the windows because it was time for the young kids to start revving up, and they would be too loud for us to sleep.
It was sad. Left to our own devices, we party like our young sons would—plus beers.
At least we were refreshed and ready to take on the next part of our trip: a leisurely drive down Hwy. 1 through the Big Sur coast. The drive is a good one if you just want a daytrip. Hwy. 1 hugs the cliffs on the way up and kind of hangs over it on the way down, making the ride both scary and exhilarating. On a clear day, the views are phenomenal, but on a foggy day, it just plain sucks. Then some days you get outstanding views of the rocks and waves below for a few miles, only to have the view turn into gray soup.
That’s what happened on our drive. We started out by pulling over at every vista point and taking pictures. When we could no longer see anything, we disappointedly turned to the radio to keep us occupied. That wasn’t a good idea. The only station that came through in that remote area was a political debate channel. So we were stuck in the car on a slow drive, in dreary weather, listening to radicals argue politics—without a CD in sight. It was inevitable that our talk, too, would turn to politics.
Because the nature of the topic was pretty inflammatory, I’ll just say our argument went something like this:
“I don’t like his game, either, but I think that President is playing basketball as best as he can with the court and equipment he’s been given.”
“Well, he can change the game if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. Plus he lied about the team he worships.”
“Yeah, well, that other President was the one that started the basketball game in the first place, and who cares that this President hasn’t been seen at any Sunday basketball games?”
Then silence. Long, awkward, non-blissful silence. Fortunately, the drive features a lot of places to stop, grab a bite to eat, and take a break from the road. We did just that at Ragged Point Inn, a great little place with a hotel on the cliff’s edge, a restaurant, a café, and a snack bar. Ragged Point Inn also boasts beautiful gardens and a redwood pagoda overlooking the cliffs, where weddings are held. It’s an incredibly beautiful place, just 20 miles north of San Simeon near the San Luis Obispo/Monterey County Line.
We ate a veggie sandwich and took in the wildlife around us. Then it started: “Remember when we took the boys on this drive?”
“Do you think the boys would’ve appreciated that dinner we had last night?”
“Yeah, surprisingly, I think they would have.”
“We’ll have to bring them along next time.”
Turns out silence isn’t always blissful, but peace is. And our peace comes from the whole family hanging together.
Arts Editor Shelly Cone got home and promptly started to complain about the chaos her boys were causing around the house. Ah, peace. Fold your message into a paper airplane and toss it toward scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 23-30, 2010.
