1990
My parents and I move to San Diego when I am eight years old. They have three criteria for our new neighborhood: near the beach, good public schools, not too far from my father’s new job. So they buy a condo in Del Mar, twenty minutes north of the city center, a five minute walk from the beach. I don’t know what condo means. My parents’ explanation involves something about us owning the space in our new house, but not the walls. When it comes time to hang our pictures, I start to cry, worried they’ll get arrested.

We spend a lot of time at the beach in the early days. We buy burritos from the Mexican place down the street and eat them on lifeguard tower #7 – just far enough down the beach that it’s usually empty – as the sun goes down. When the sky is clear enough, we watch for the green flash, a quick flicker the second before the sun slips beneath the horizon. On weekends and after school, I go boogie boarding, sometimes with my father, sometimes alone, until my limbs are tan and my hair is gold. At night in bed I close my eyes and feel the push-pull of the tide on my body, the tightness the salt water has left on my skin. School doesn’t start for three more months and there are no children in our neighborhood. I spend most of my time reading and going on walks with my parents.

Sometimes we walk too far down. There is the time we accidentally end up at Black’s Beach, famous for being ‘clothing optional.’ I remember a man sitting in a beach chair, his leathery legs spread open, defiantly displaying lumps I didn’t know existed on people. There is the time we come across a beached whale, surrounded by a crowd, just staring, covered in hundreds of flies. As the days go on, the smell creeps up the hill, making its way to our windows. Eventually the city has to hire a crane to take its decomposing body out to sea. This, I learn, is Del Mar.

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