From Coney Island to Venice Beach

Though I'm usually not prone to blogging sappiness, I had to share a huge event that happened yesterday. At about 11AM yesterday morning, my little guy waded into the ocean for the first time. Considering he's only 15 months old and the chop is really rough on that stretch of Venice beach, I consider it a really bold move on his part. I didn't even have to ask him to go. Little man took my hand, walked me all the way across the beach, then kept on going right into the water. I must be getting old, but crossing the magic 3-0 seems to have really mellowed me out. Ask any of my friends from the college days back at Howard University in Washington, DC, and they'll tell you I was one uptight dude. Now, I'm basking in my son's first steps into the ocean like the kid won a Nobel Prize or something. My daughter is currently traveling on the east coast with her mom (my ex-wife), but her seventh birthday is coming up on August 5th, and I'm more excited about that than I would be for my own birthday. She started swimming earlier this year by the way, so now I'll have my hands full with them both at the beach. Her first trip to the beach came at Coney Island (she was born in NYC), when she rocketed up and down the boardwalk chasing seagulls and trying to feed them her Nathan's fries.

As far removed as the beaches of Venice might seem, in many ways my son's experience harkens back to my childhood. The beach near my family's apartment in Coney Island is where some of my earliest memories begin to come into focus. In many ways the communities are similar, Coney Island and Venice, but they are in just as many ways different. As Mingus stepped into the ocean, wetsuit-clad surfers catching waves formed the backdrop. When I took those first perilous steps into the water, I was greeted by a sea of brown humanity, Coney Island then being the preferred beach of Brooklyn's black and brown poor. And when Mackenzie first caught wind of the Atlantic on that very same Coney Island beach, it was among fur-clad Russian couples. I can't say I prefer any of these images over the other, as they all leave indelible marks on your psyche. But I can say that where the city meets the ocean is one of the best places to be introspective and, sometimes, to even be inspired.