Swimming with Sharks

We took the girls to Heavens, just north of Malibu, and found an empty cove. The girls wandered over the rocks to a tide pool while Raf and I read our books, listened to our iPods, observed the random daytripper and shell-seeker. We dreamed about going to Spain and Italy next summer, discussing what the kids would eat, where to stay, lowering our expectations to simply a string of days on foreign beaches interspersed with Gaudi and gladiators. 

A pod of dolphins swam past the rocks. I counted them silently, wondering if the girls noticed them. One... two... three fins! 

"At least they're not sharks," I said to Raf, who took one earphone out and clicked off his iPhone.

"Yeah, I didn't tell you this," he said, squinting under his dark glasses, staring out to sea, "but a surfer got attacked by a shark last week, north of Santa Barbara. Guy my age."

"Attacked?"

Raf doesn't sugarcoat things. "Ate him. He washed up on the shore."

I didn't say anything at first. I blinked under my own dark glasses, searching the horizon for  answers. I wondered aloud if maybe the food supply for sharks has been affected by global warming or some other environmental illness, and maybe that's why we're hearing about more shark attacks closer to the shore.

"It's the first time a shark has killed a surfer in Southern California in 11 years," Raf said.

A few paddle boarders and kayaks sailed by the cove. My life with Raf flashed before me, glorious beach days like this one combined with the future I imagine for us, filled with traveling and surfing and weddings and grandbabies and growing old, really old, together. 

"I haven't told the kids," he said. "They'd never go back in the water."

"Or they wouldn't want you to go back in." I held my tongue though I wanted to add, Please don't get eaten by a shark... please don't get hurt ever...

He laughed. "Like I'd stop surfing because I'm afraid of sharks."

I let some time pass, considered the glint of sunlight on the glassy green surface of the water. "I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you," I said, trying my best to keep my voice flat, unemotional.

"You'd be okay."

"Yeah, but -- "

"You'd be okay. That's one thing we know, unfortunately. Life goes on." 

I saw the girls rounding the top of the rocks again, waving, pink-brown skin and bikinis, big smiles, beach hair. Max and death and Isaac and sadness and the Great Unknown swirled above them like the banners that soar behind small airplanes over beaches on sunny days. The ocean lulled below them, lapping softly at the barnacles on the rocks. Understanding seeped in, and I let it sit with me.

We swim with sharks.  And life goes on. 

Passing the Torch

Raf, Lola & Nina at Zuma

Raf & Lola check the waves

It can't be easy for my husband to accept that he's the father of three girls and married to a rather frilly woman.  Raised by a macho Israeli dad in a sports-obsessed family with a strong older sister and two younger brothers, he must have imagined that he'd raise a basketball team of boys rather than a parade of pink princesses.  There's only so much apologizing I can do; after all, it takes two sets of genes to create a child.  And we've long since determined that we're done having babies - there comes a time when you need to be grateful for the children you've been blessed to welcome into the world, and to set your intentions on raising them rather than having more kids.  Contrary to what our extended relatives may like to say when we see them once a year, we're not holding out for a son.


Still, I'm sure he feels a pang to teach a son how to be a man.  How to pee on the side of a road.  How to kick ass in a worthy fight. How to play basketball. He's never said as much, but I see how he studies my relationship with the girls, the way we bond over clothes or make-up or teen heartthrobs. It's different.  I'm sure he sometimes feels like a lone wolf in a sea of pink frippery.


But an interesting thing has happened.  Our youngest daughter, now 6 and three-quarters, asked him to teach her how to surf.  Over the past few months, he's taught her how to balance on a board in the swimming pool, bought her a wetsuit and a boogie board, hoping that she'll learn the basics before she's actually on a wave.  Today, he took us all to the beach so that the girls could jump on their boogie boards.  She took a few tumbles in the whitewash, coming up with sand in her hair and her nose, but she refused to get out.  Instead, she went back out in the waves, again and again.  She inspired her older sister, too, and we had a hard time getting them to leave the beach after a few hours.


"She's a natural," he told me, but his smile and the way he can't form the words to tell me how proud he is, is louder than words. 

Happiness is a Sunny Summer Day at Zuma

The Best Worst Day Ever

Max's memorial was yesterday. The weather was gorgeous at the beach, truly sparkling. My kids played in the water and got all their clothes wet. Not that it really mattered: my older two wore fancier outfits... the youngest wore what she wanted, which were old grimy jeans under a cheap Target skirt and a small t-shirt... I think the stress and sadness had finally gotten to her and she was like, Fuck it. I'm-a wear what I please. She did the same thing at Raf's dad's funeral, when she was 2 and wore a Snow White costume.

Anyway, it was gorgeous and heartfelt. I thought later that maybe I felt "Max" in the room... like he was there, watching over us, but it's not something I usually believe. My thought is that people don't stick around on the earth immediately after they die... their souls have too much to do, departed loved ones to reconnect with, an afterlife to learn. The funeral is held so soon after death that it is really just a way for us "survivors" to hold each other and love each other through the pain. So maybe it wasn't so much "Max" in there with us as our collective memories and love for him, stitching us together, the quilt of his life.

Over the week, Raf did what he does best: take care of business. In the midst of it, though, he would remember, in fits and starts, that all of this was for Max. Unbelievable, he kept saying to me. I can't get used to it.

When we arrived at the beach house, I was worried about going into the bedroom where Max had died, even though the bed was dismantled immediately and is gone (his mother has it). But when I walked in, his friends were gathered in the corner with a big ol' bud, rolling, and soon the place smelled like Amsterdam, sweet and herbal. It was kind of like the Native American ritual of "smudging," in which you exorcise evil spirits by burning sage. Only it made everyone happier, dreamier, hungrier, more able to enjoy the beautiful day outside the beach house windows.

I'm not saying it was easy. I'm only saying it was beautiful, which felt appropriate.

On the way home, I asked the girls how they were doing, if they had a good time. Serena, barely still awake, sand in her hair, clothes still damp from tumbling in the tide with her sisters and cousin, said, "It was the best worst day ever." And it was.