Winter at the beach

Goodness, why did I leave California?

I'm sitting here at the Outer Banks, enjoying the sound of the surf and the cold wind blowing off the sea. Is the ocean more profound for those who grow up near it, or for Midwestern boys like me to whom it will always be a bit of an inconceivable mystery? No fires allowed the beach, which is too bad because huddling around some flames out there at night would be terrific. But we've got surf, and seashells, and fresh seafood dives all up and down the beach. It's perfect.

I'm travelling with my family--all of my immediate plus two other hotel suites of uncles, aunts and cousins. Sometimes I'm sure I'm adopted. But then I get alone w/ a cousin and we compare notes on some of the loonier elements of our family history and I realize I'm not the only one who looks around and says "how did I come out of this?"

I've become buds over the past couple of years with my second cousin...He's 11 now, and asked me the other day if I was his friend.

I said with a smile "No, sorry pal, but I pick my friends." It's all nice, sarcastic, pre-teen humor. But the notion has been echoing in my head.

Family. My family. So-and-so begat so-and-so. And then so-and-so begat so-and-so. Somewhere I fall in there and, hopefully, some will follow down the line. Just like the beginnings of the Christmas story, really. I get grafted into all of the peculiaririties and idiosynchracies and somehow am formed...My mind continues to boggle.