Conversation

When I was growing up here in Humboldt County we only had two kinds of weather. We started and ended our days with fog unless it was raining which might be a daily occurrence for months at a time.
Feeling the cool mist of the fog on the beach this morning took me back to my childhood.
My family was poor. We didn't have a car, made all of our own clothes and polished our shoes to make them look more presentable. Like other financially challenged folks we were proud.
Sometimes on the weekends my dad would borrow the neighbor's car and we would spend two days on the beach. We picked surf fish off the sand, cleaned and cooked them in a cast iron fry pan. We ate them with our fingers. So good.
A generation later I did the same with my kids.
My vegetarian grandkids weren't interested but loved the beach.
This was my mother on the same beach Summer and I walk.
A Wailaki woman and a survivor.
She taught me what she could.