On the inside

I’m off on an adventure with the Girl.

We have been watching the extended weather forecast in San Diego for over two weeks. It looks like we can expect beach-y sunshine and highs in the 70’s for three of the five days we plan to be there. On the other two? We’ll see! There has been some discussion surrounding a visit to the pandas at the zoo, or maybe a day trip into Tijuana before that HUGE, beautiful, wall gets built and the Mexicans stop letting us in.

My college friend, Mary, plans to take us to two of her favorite restaurants while we’re in San Diego. We both lived on the third floor of Middlebrook Hall a LONG time ago. Back then, she was blonde, beautiful, and smart, with a handsome hockey player for a boyfriend. She is still blonde, beautiful, and smart. The boyfriend? A memory. She has two grand babies which just doesn’t seem possible when we are together and the decades we’ve known each other melt away.  My grandmother said many times in her later years that when she looked in the mirror, she was always surprised by the old woman staring back at her. She went to her grave feeling eighteen on the inside. Maybe all the lucky ones do.

In other news, I have been using drug store self-tanning lotion on my sun-starved Nordic legs for the past week so as not to blind the Californians the first time I put on the one swimsuit I own and emerge from my hotel room into the sunlight. In an effort to keep from resembling too closely the presidential candidate who most reminds me of a demented, Ginger raccoon, I have been careful not to apply any of the self-tanner to my face. You would think that with all that money, a guy like him could have someone in his life who would tell him the truth about the white eye rings, wouldn’t you? Suggest a little self-tanner there, perhaps? But I digress.

My perpetually brown daughter does not need a fake tan and looks better in a swimsuit than I ever did, tan or not. She plans to wear a bikini and paddle board in the sea. Right now, my plan is to sit on the beach, read, and let the sun work its magic. Because there’s nothing like the real thing, is there?

It is good to be eighteen on the inside, white legs and all. With “young” old friends and a sweet, brown-skinned daughter who invites her pale Mama to take trips so that she can get a little sun on her legs and make more memories. But mostly, in March, it is good, so good, just to not have to be very impressive at all.

California, here we come!