Two Oceans A Day

One summer Saturday three and a half decades ago I ended up on both coasts on the same day.

I saw the late morning sun gleaming off the Atlantic Ocean at Coney Island and later watched the moon hover over the Pacific at Malibu projecting a long stream of silver over dark blue waves.

I was at Coney Island for the Mermaid Parade, a ritual that welcomes summer with kids and adults dressed as all kinds of sea creatures and mermaids of every gender strutting along the boardwalk past the reviewing stand in front of the Coney Island Hysterical Society which hosts the event and awards prizes. I was a judge that year and bribes are encouraged, so contestants pressed candy and coins into our palms as they passed us.

I believe the wedding party of Neptune’s daughter won that year. There was a fearsome king, with long grey curls and holding an oversized trident. Beautifully gowned daughters in gorgeous wigs and make-up and glittery pastel dresses that split into two fins at the ankle. Sea creatures and iconic heroes, pirates and wenches, witches and warlocks paraded up Neptune Avenue and past the crowds on the boardwalk, with the summer solstice sun gleaming off the Atlantic beyond.

The event logo is the iconic Coney Island “Happy Face” a goofy man’s face framed by red parted hair and showing off a full set of gleaming teeth in a wide smile. It dates back to the turn of the 20^th century and was the original trademark of Steeplechase—“The Happy Place”–one of three amusement parks within Coney Island where my family spent several engaging Sundays each season enjoying the rides. 

The favorite was always the breath-catching “steeplechase.” You rode two apiece, one in front, one behind, like a tandem bicycle, atop an iron horse that glided up and down tracks like a roller coaster and swerved in a wide arc over Coney Island beach. I would have ridden it every day if I could have.

I left at noon for my 3 pm flight west from JFK and felt triumphant in the air over patches of farmland and rivers and mountains–covering so much ground in so few hours. The time change worked in my favor and it was only 5 pm in LA—plenty of time to rent a car and head a short distance along the coast up to Malibu where I was spending the night in a small motel and would fall asleep to the serenade of the waves that night.

I stopped for supper at a café on the patio of one of those half-health-food-half-coffee-bars that practically shout “Healthy California Here” in a mostly deserted strip mall just before sunset, which took its time arriving because it was the longest day of the year.

Then I walked down to the beach to watch the sun slip into rolling waves and a little while later the full moon hovering over those same waves. I didn’t learn until years afterward that the full moon always rises near sunset. The day was magic like that.

I don’t remember why I was in L.A. on that trip but of course, it would have been for work. But it isn’t the work that I remember.

It’s the dozens of whole fruits floating off into the water at Coney Island, thrown out onto the waves in a seasonal offering as Caribbean-born Brooklynites sang songs and danced to the rhythm in a line stretching down to the Atlantic, repeating rituals borrowed from their native towns to greet the solstice. It’s the glittering make-up of one of Neptune’s daughter’s bridesmaids as they all paraded down the boardwalk eager for Coney Island Hysterical prizes.

It’s the soft sound of a jet engine in a cloudless sky gliding over the expanse of the entire country gaining hours as it traveled; its palm trees nodding to a gentle breeze and the silvery surface of a captive tide pool in a hollow of sun-bleached sand, and the waves of light under the fullness of the moon.

And it’s the sound and smell of the sea in the dark of the night lulling me to sweet drowsiness and a deep, full, restorative sleep.

For I’d experienced something that wouldn’t have been possible a mere hundred years before.

I’d stood on the shore of two oceans, one on each coast of my native land, in the span of just 12 hours—half a day. And two oceans on a single day is satisfaction enough.