By Louie Ferrera

Carol and I left for the Sierras on a rainy Wednesday before dawn, returning home after three days of snow and bitter cold to brilliant sunshine and a warm breeze that said, “Spring is here!” with every jingle of our wind chimes. To finally get a clear, dry day after such a gloriously wet winter, I could see how the angle of the sun had shifted and noticed the difference in the quality of light. Our planet was tilting closer and closer to the sun, a little every day. Our backyard had undergone a magical transformation, seemingly overnight.

Tiny green leaves had begun to appear on the ends of the bare branches of our plum and apple trees. The cherry trees were bursting with popcorn-like flowers. Uncountable numbers of buds were making their initial appearances on the oak tree that will soon shade our front yard. The grass suddenly needed to be cut. Wasps were beginning to construct their nests. Eventually I’ll go out under cover of night and destroy them but for now I just chalk up their renewed activity as an inevitable part of spring. Pink jasmine vines climb 25 feet into the air, reaching nearly to the tops of and covering two cypress trees. Thousands of blossoms are about to burst forth in a dazzling display of fragrance and springtime exuberance. 

And the flowers! Freesias; white, yellow, red and even a few blue ones, were blooming everywhere. Of all the springtime flowers, this one is my absolute favorite. Their heady fragrance is evocative and fleeting and an essential marker of spring. The smell of freesias always brings me back to that girl with the curly red hair and blue eyes who came to the door when I picked her up for our one and only date with a sprig of yellow freesias tucked into her hair. I don’t remember her name or where we went on that date but I always think of her when the freesias are in bloom.

Last spring I poached an African daisy plant from a yard in our neighborhood and planted it. It flourished but produced no flowers. This year is a different story. This ground hugging plant now covers six square feet and is bursting with mulit-petaled flowers; white with purple centers. Patience pays off as nature does what it will do all in its own time. Yellow daffodils, purple and white hyacinth, multi-colored tulips, purple and yellow primrose, and pale blue forget-me-nots all add their brilliant colors to the springtime palette. Lavender and white irises are next up to bloom, hints of their blossoms are already beginning to emerge. If Diego Rivera were alive today, he’d be in my backyard painting the huge clusters of milky white calla lilies that grow beneath our kitchen window.

Throughout my tenure as an elementary school teacher, I received many sweet end-of-the-school-year gifts, from “I❤️ My Teacher” coffee mugs to bottles of wine and everything in between. Two of my most cherished gifts bloom every year in our backyard. One is a now six-foot high hydrangea bush that produces softball size purple and white flowers. The other is a lily that blooms in late spring with large bell-shaped, salmon colored flowers. Talk about gifts that keep on giving!

Somewhere along the Pacific Flyway the Hooded Oriole, Western Tanager, Rufous Hummingbird and various tiny yellow warblers are slowly making their way to our neighborhood. I listen for their calls and anticipate the brilliant flashes of color and song they will bring to the surroundings. Of all the signs of spring, the birds are my favorite. The oriole nests atop my next door neighbor’s towering fan palm tree. Spring truly arrives for me when I first see it perched up there shining in the morning sun.

Of course many of the springtime metaphors of rebirth and renewal manifest themselves in the beginning of baseball season. As I write this, major leaguers are tuning up in the Arizona and Florida sunshine, with the start of the regular season just days ahead. You can rest assured that I’ll be in the stands at Oracle Park cheering on my beloved San Francisco Giants. Welcome spring indeed!

By Louie Ferrera

On March 6th our precious twins turned twenty. I wrote them a letter.

Dear Sam and Denali,

So how on Earth did you both manage to turn twenty? The moment of your birth was a watershed event for your mom and I and without a doubt the greatest day in our lives. Two decades later and I can still picture many of the details from that morning with surprising clarity. They’re all there: the sounds of your cries, first Denali then six minutes later Sam, your tiny red bodies covered with streaks of blood and a powdery white residue, your clenched fists and closed eyes, the way you both writhed atop those heated tables under the blinding light of the operating room at Kaiser. You looked so fragile and helpless. I remember asking one of the pediatricians, “Can I touch them?” Her reply, “Well, they’re your kids aren’t they?” There were so many people in the room that morning, all there to make sure you were brought safely into the world. You were just minutes old, I stood there speechless with wonder, letting the moment fully wash over me and wanting to take in every last detail. I was exhausted from a sleepless night but wired on adrenaline. Throughout her pregnancy mom and I anticipated and prepared for this moment only to realize that it was nothing like we had expected it to be. Nothing could have prepared me for the flood of emotions that I experienced meeting you both for the first time.

We were a brand new family and spent the next four days together in the hospital getting acquainted with one another. I did all of the “heavy lifting” as mom was recovering from a C-section. The four of us went for daily walks up and down the halls of the maternity ward. You were side-by-side inside a wheeled basket that squeaked as we strolled along. What a sight we must have been. I only went home to shower, feed the cat and bring in the mail. Our room at the hospital had this funky fold-out kind of couch/bed which I “slept” on. I use quotes here because neither of us did much actual sleeping. You’d cry, mom and I would wake up. We’d change you, feed you and go back to sleep as quickly as possible, twice each night. I became a diaper changing expert in a hurry. Wake, change, feed, sleep… This was a pattern we would become all too familiar with until you were toddlers.

As you know, mom’s birthday is four days after yours. That was the day we took you home. We emerged from the hospital into a blindingly brilliant March afternoon. The nurse and I strapped you into twin infant car seats, handling you like fine porcelain. I drove the two miles to our house about as slowly and cautiously as was humanly possible. It was an absolutely stellar day; warm and sun splashed, the sky as blue as your infant eyes. Trees were beginning to leaf out, daffodils and tulips bloomed, the hillsides were awash in golden mustard flowers. After four days in the hospital the world was simply aglow!

After what seemed like an eternity I finally pulled the Saturn station wagon into our driveway. You were still fast asleep in your car seats which mom and I unhooked and carried inside. Friends of ours had left a bag of groceries in the entryway which came in handy later that day as neither of us had energy to prepare a meal. Your crib was in our room. We gingerly laid you down then crawled under the covers of our deliciously comfy bed, our sleep deprived bodies grateful for its warmth and familiarity. We were home. We were together. We were a family.

Love,

Dad

By Louie Ferrera

The serendipity of a beach structure always makes me smile. I can see the spontaneity in its design, the helter skelter randomness in the way the various materials were used to construct it. There may have been a conscious effort on behalf of the builders to come to the beach and erect it, but most likely it was created on a whim. “Here’s all this flotsam and jetsam stretched out along the high tide line, we have the waves and the wind and the shorebirds as our audience, the sand is our canvas. Let’s build something.” When our kids were little, building a structure was usually a part of any day at the beach. It was always a spur of the moment decision though, based upon the materials at hand. Our creations were never too elaborate or very sturdy but they were ours. When completed, we’d step back and admire them with pride.

I love the ephemeral nature of  beach structures, they’re not meant to last. No matter how solid you think the construction is, winter storms, high tides and wind will eventually dismantle it and carry the pieces out to sea, back from where they came. Typically a beach structure is some type of shelter; a lean-to or three walled construction open in front with a crude roof. I’ve seen everything from simple benches to wildly improvisational sculptures that seem to have been well thought out and assembled by visual artists or engineers. Mostly though I believe these structures are simply spontaneous creations inspired by the freedom and beauty of a windswept beach.

The materials found in a beach structure vary wildly, they can’t be bought at Home Depot. The basis of anything created at the beach is wood: scraps of lumber, broken palettes, tree branches and tree trunks; wood so bleached and weathered it’s impossible to discern its origin. Of course there are styrofoam floats, rope, plastic bottles and buckets, feathers, fishing poles, animal bones, long strands of bull kelp, shells. The list goes on. My favorite object was an old metal ammunition box which I found beside a crudely constructed hut. Inside was a journal filled with poetry and prose; heartfelt musings on life, love and nature. I added my own thoughts, sealed the box and went on my way. A year later I returned to find only a smattering of driftwood where the hut had once stood. Maybe that box is out there bobbing like a message in a bottle somewhere in the vast blue Pacific. Perhaps it will someday be discovered, the reader of that journal wondering where it came from and about the lives of the people who wrote in it.

The beach at Abbott’s Lagoon in the northern part of Point Reyes National Seashore is an especially dreamy stretch of coastline. This is a wild and enchanting place where the beach stretches on as far as the eye can see. It’s also my favorite place to discover unique and unusual structures. Over the years Abbott’s has been a special place for me and my family. We’ve spent many hours here beach combing and building structures. Our kids are in their late teens now and not so apt to spend a day at the beach with mom and dad so Carol and I headed there last week as a duo.

The day was warm and cloudless. Under a dome of endless blue we strolled the beach, filling our lungs with cool, crisp air and reveling in the freedom of the day. Snowy plovers chased by the incoming surf skittered along, their tiny beaks probing the sand for morsels. Gulls wheeled above. Typically the surf here is huge with sets of waves thundering in without a break. But on this day the ocean behaved more like a bay with smaller waves and more time between sets. A short ways down the beach we happened upon an interesting complex of structures, the central one being a solidly built wooden tipi about seven feet tall with a large opening in front. The inside was spacious enough to fit four people comfortably. Various pieces of driftwood were scattered around the outside looking like an otherworldly art installation. A wooden round three feet in diameter sat in the sand like the prefect table for two. Behind the tipi were two ingeniously constructed throne-like chairs. The base of each chair was a circular metal crab trap, the backs various lengths of driftwood, the seats a sturdy combination of worn lumber. These whimsical creations were surprisingly well built. I could imaging King Neptune himself perched atop one of these thrones, presiding over the beach. 

Creating a structure of our own wasn’t in the cards for us today so Carol and I walked on, the promise of new discoveries, human made and otherwise, stretched out before us.