The Wedding
By Michael Ray
The other afternoon it was hot, and I ventured down to my cove intent on swimming. The water temperature had been unseasonably too cold to engage in my usual routine of swimming around the outside buoy without fins. The swim takes about thirty minutes and is a great workout for both body and mind. Perhaps it is better for one’s mind; if you go out there alone in bathing trunks and nothing else, it is primeval: just you and Mama Ocean.
Mama Ocean does not know you are there and does not care. That is why so many tourists perish. It takes just one tiny mistake to drown. Example: a few years ago at Diver’s Cove, a 26-year-old woman, her young daughter and her boyfriend walked out onto a shelf of rock at the northern point. On that shelf is a “giggle crack,” a long horizontal “V” in the shelf. Waves roll in and compress to the point of the “V” where they explode upward. It looks beautiful. But if you jump or fall in, you are trapped. It is too slippery to climb out, and with the continual an-coming waves, you can’t swim out.
The daughter slipped in. The mother jumped in to save her, soon followed by the boyfriend. Before the lifeguard could sprint to the rescue, both the mother and boyfriend drowned. Only the daughter survived.
When you realize there is no mercy, ever. On even a casual swim to an outside buoy, you cramp so tightly you cannot swim, and drown, it brings an immediacy to life that I’ve never experienced in any other fashion.
It is spiritual.
In the last few weeks, the water temperature finally moved up to its seasonable tolerable range, so I resumed my swimming routine.
The other afternoon, though, when I arrived, I saw a tall, handsome man waiting at the top of the beach in a beautiful tan suit. He is a semi-regular named Blake. It was a shallow tide, and the sand was hard-packed. After seeing Blake, I glanced down the beach where probably a hundred people waited in rows of folding wooden chairs or standing. It was for an obvious wedding. Blake was with two flower girls and, I think, his mother. I asked, “Who’s getting married?” He replied, “me.” I congratulated him and walked down the beach and, instead of swimming, joined the wedding party.
Why not? It was for locals, and I’m a local.
I looked around for the bride but could not spot her. I learned later she had been prepping at the apartment of another local named Brad. His apartment is about forty steps up from the beach on steep concrete stairs. Brad always helps everyone, all the time. He invites locals to hang out there, prepare community dinners, parties and even events—like weddings. Brad is always there to help. You can count on it.
Soon the procession began. Flower girls walked barefoot down the beach tossing rose pedals, and then the groom. We waited until finally the bride, another semi-regular named Monica, promenaded to the ceremony. (How she made it down those steep steps in her dress, I don’t know.)
Monica looked like Kate Middleton at her British royal wedding to Prince William: gorgeous, radiant, smiling, and in a wedding dress just as deliberately tight and sexy as Kate’s. Oh man, what a visage.
Together, Blake and Monica looked like the very image of a perfect couple. Given the bride’s dress, you could state that it was a British ideal. But hey, Blake and Monica weren’t wearing shoes. It was the beach. Our beach and our ideal.
Soon enough, the ceremony was over, and I took my swim, smiling all the way. I could fear/love Mama Ocean some other time.
Michael is a Laguna Beach resident and principal officer emeritus of Laguna Forward PAC.
Police Chief Calvert and City Manager Dupuis, your very upbeat description of the police department is in dissonance with data from a informal survey taken, the results of which were given at the 15 November 2022 city council meeting. Nearly all of the residents have a very favorable view of the individual policemen and policewomen. But we see evidence of morale problems and would like to have a survey that is totally independent of the city manager, including the selection of the organization to conduct the survey. Too often we have seen consultants selected that seemingly give answers that the city manager and city council desire. I hope the new city council will the take the matter of apparently low police morale seriously and do a totally independent survey to find the real opinions of the police employees and make whatever changes are required to ensure that Laguna Beach can retain our police officers. Laguna Beach should be a city that police officers from all over the nation want to serve. Instead many of our police are saying that if they found another job they would leave.