My amazing, wonderful, and adorable mother-in-law turns 80 this week.
Since she loves the ocean and being outdoors, we decided we’d treat her to a weekend at the coast, just relaxing and spending time together. We arranged a small gathering for a late lunch/early dinner on Saturday but left the rest of the time open for her desires. It was quite possibly the best present we’ve ever given.
The home we rented was just up the coast from Bodega Bay, across from Portuguese Beach, and slightly up on the bluff. Behind the house was a 540-acre ranch, and while there were some other homes around us, they felt far enough away that we were completely private.
Inside and out, it was unbelievably gorgeous. The pictures we’d seen online didn’t half do it justice – in person it was stunning. It was oriented so that every room faced the ocean, all three bedrooms had sliders that opened onto decks, and every feature was top of the line. The owners have fantastic taste in everything from flooring to linens to lighting, and we kept discovering more luxurious touches as the weekend wore on.
The weather was Sonoma County October perfect: clear, warm, and barely breezy. From our deck we could hear the ocean, faintly in the distance. We spent hours – literally – watching the sun slip into the sea and the sky darken above an orange glow on the horizon as we relaxed in Adirondack chairs.
We watched the antics of a hundred hummingbirds (okay, a good dozen that moved quickly enough that it felt like there could be a hundred) as they dipped and soared and hovered and chirruped and landed feet away from us on the deck railing, just above the walkway lined with purple flowering plants.
We watched a mama deer and her two little fawns step delicately through the grasses in the lot next to the house, and the daddy wander through the front yard early one morning as we sipped our coffee and watched through the floor-to-ceiling windows. We saw a tiny rabbit dart out from a bush and race across the driveway to another bush, and itty-bitty birds (finches?) skitter across the yard, pecking at their breakfast.
We went to Schoolhouse Beach — Portuguese Beach was closed, as it was a rest stop for the Grand Fondo bike racers — and stood on the pebbly beach, watching the waves crash against the jagged black rocks. We watched seagulls soar over the water, and one giving himself a thorough bath at the edge of the surf.
We also went to Doran Beach and walked along the damp, packed sand at the edge of the gentle rolling waves, looking for shells and sand dollars. (We actually found a sand dollar that was still a living creature – a first for us – and checked out the little waving tentacles on the bottom, before getting it safely back to the water.)
We watched the sand pipers do their funny little racing in and out of the waves as the water stretched in to the shore and then retreated. More seagulls flew overhead, dipping to skim along the water just beyond the forming waves.
Inside the house we discovered a beautiful telescope, and we were able to peer at the moon, shining brightly in a clear night sky. During the day we zoomed in on boats; fishing boats racing along the water, and a sailboat navigating the calm seas. We checked out a whitecap just offshore and saw it was a rock, with waves crashing over it and sending spray into the air. We trained the scope on deer in far fields, watching their ears twitch as they remained watchful while they munched on the grasses.
Throughout the entire weekend, Mom never stopped smiling and exclaiming about how wonderful everything was. She took her coffee out to the deck each morning and gazed at the sea, and always chose chairs that faced the windows to keep the view ever present. Every time I looked at her, she was blissful in her delight, sighing contentedly and absorbing every bit of our time at the ocean.
I think it’s safe to say she had a very happy 80th birthday!
