Haven by the Sea

It is a tugboat of a house among a fleet of luxury liners on the one-mile length of Sunset Beach. It looks out upon the sand, a horizon of ocean and sky, and beyond that, the continued path of sunsets and infinite possibilities.

Three bedrooms, one bath, 1,100 square feet, it practically rubs shoulders with neighbors. The face is glass and stucco, overlooking a small wooden deck, a yard of sand that has been dug up time and again by toy shovels and bulldozers and tiny palms. The berms are foliaged with ice plants.

It was built in the mid-1950s by a young couple with two sons. Helen and Ivan Liggett were denied a GI loan on the property because it was considered vulnerable to the violent outbursts of high seas. So Ivan, a lawyer reared in South Dakota, borrowed money from his father to buy the lot and build a home, the only one he and Helen would ever own.

It is where sons John and Gary grew up, where the beach and ocean became a part of their lives too. When their parents died in the 1980s, they began renting it out. Then 10 years ago, Gary bought out John’s interest. He hopes to retire there someday.

Until then, it is like thousands of places along the beaches of Southern California, rented out in one-week blocks to visitors who bring with them their own stories and expectations. Most come to listen to the ocean, to be soothed by its rhythms and its touch, to wash themselves of the grit of daily life. To do absolutely nothing at all.

The Liggett house in Sunset Beach in northern Orange County has a way of pulling people back to it. Its owner, Gary, and his family always spend a piece of their summer here. Many of those who rent it on other weeks are repeat visitors too. On the week before the Liggetts arrived this summer, the Gleason family from Arizona--it was their second time back--and the Turners shared the house. On the day after the Liggetts left, two sisters and a granddaughter arrived from Virginia and Louisiana. It was their fourth time.

Visitors come to the small house on Sunset Beach to contemplate and dream, to renew themselves. One week at a time.

A Difficult Journey

For the Gleasons, getting to the house this summer was something of an endurance test. When the tread came flying off the driver’s side front tire of their minivan, it was at least 110 degrees in the desert outside Phoenix. Twenty miles into their vacation, Jane and John with young sons Chet and Everett stood like lost puppies on the side of the road. They were bummed out and hot; it was by all accounts a pitiful sight.

John bolted on the emergency tire so they could drive back and buy a replacement. Their traveling companions this year, the Turners, were in a separate vehicle and offered to take the Gleason boys and continue the journey west, lessening the range and depth of misfortune.

Like a pair of loafers at a shoe clearance, one tire turned into four, which put a $300 dent in the Gleasons’ vacation budget. So long to Alaskan king crab at Captain Jack’s. Hello to burgers at Woody’s.

With fresh rubber on the Windstar, the Gleasons started out again. As they drove, Jane worried about whether Chet and Everett were behaving, whether the Turners, with two sons of their own, would be able to find the house. Sharing the house makes it more affordable. Rent runs $2,450 a week during the peak season.

It was quiet in the car without the boys, and the remainder of the drive was pleasantly uneventful until they hit traffic just past Riverside, and John’s grip on the steering wheel tightened and frustration set in. It’s hard to believe that visitors might actually come to Southern California to get away from people, but that’s exactly one of the reasons the Gleasons enjoy Sunset Beach. Getting there at 4 in the afternoon, however, is another matter.

The Windstar had barely come to a complete stop when John, a 42-year-old bridge engineer, was already changed and charging for the water as if his feet and soul were on fire. He jumped in with the kids, who were already getting knocked around by the waves.

The families did not make many plans for this trip. Mostly what they wanted to do was nothing, and as their week unfolded, they turned out to be quite good at it.

Cassy and Jane did go out one night to a wine bar that played a lot of Eric Clapton music. John and Wade spent a day on the links, while Cassy and Jane took the kids to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. John took the kids to Legoland one day. Wade, director of the Department of Racing in Arizona, and Cassy went to watch the horses run at Los Alamitos one night.

In between, there was time to ponder, to purge and take inventory, to be lured by the ocean.

One night when the kids were asleep and the moon was full, Jane went out for a stroll and thought about how nice it would be if her family could afford to live on the beach, to travel and not be so confined by daily tasks. She thought about all that she could give her family if she went back to work full time, how $300 for tires would not be such a factor in their trip.

Before the children came along, she was a producer of television commercials in New York, but now her primary roles in life are that of wife, mother and daughter. She is a part-time teacher’s assistant and also instructs fitness classes from time to time.

Sometimes she thinks back to when she was only Jane, fresh out of college, backpacking alone through Europe a couple weeks after breaking up with her boyfriend, or when she moved to New York, striking out on her own, with $500.

As she walked along the beach, taking stock of her life, she did not separate herself from John and the kids. She isn’t just Jane anymore. She is part of a bigger picture that includes the tickles and tunes she gives her sons each night at bedtime, choosing from household favorites: “House at Pooh Corner” for Chet, 7; “My Favorite Things” for Everett, 4.

She could have walked through moonlight forever, but she didn’t. She turned around--away from the ocean--and returned to the house and the richness of her life.

On their final morning, she curled up on a lounge chair with Everett, not wanting their vacation to end. They talked and giggled. Then, too soon, it was time to leave.

The drive home was blissfully uneventful. There was the good feeling of driving on fresh tires. The kids watched “Scooby-Doo” and “The Jetsons” in back. John drove the entire way; Jane slept and read magazines. They all wore their shell necklaces.

Childhood Memories

The same day the Gleasons and Turners left for Phoenix, Gary and Chris Liggett arrived at the house with their three children. For Gary, being here brings back waves of childhood memories, and he sees his past reflected in the lives of his own children as they frolic in the water and dig in the sand. He wonders if this place will ever mean to them what it means to him--and what it meant to his parents.

But right now, there’s pressing business. On the next day, the Liggetts will be hosting a company barbecue at the house for 85 people. Gary, 50, is part owner of five tire stores, and once a year he invites employees and guests over for grilled chicken, burgers and hot dogs.

The Liggetts enjoy having guests over to the house, unwinding from their hectic lives at home in nearby Huntington Beach, where Gary and Chris have lived since 1979. Their three children--daughter Tracy, 15, and sons Trevor, 13, and Travis, 10--grew up there, not here on Sunset Beach.

But this house on the beach will always be home to Gary. The oil islands off the coast do not mar the beauty that he sees here. Located between Seal Beach and Huntington Beach, Sunset Beach is not Newport or Malibu or Laguna. It does not have the resort amenities, natural beauty or even the parking of more well-known beaches.

“This place,” says Gary, “is magic to me. I don’t want to sound corny, like it’s a spiritual deal, but something happens inside when I’m here. I don’t know if it’s the openness or the waves or the constant motion or sound. Maybe it’s the roots from growing up here, but there’s definitely a pull.”

It was the same pull felt by his mother, Helen, who was renting a room on Sunset Beach when she met Ivan. After they were married, had their sons and were in the market for a home, Helen lobbied hard for the vacant lot on the sand.

Ivan was drawn more to the ocean’s beauty than its embrace. In fact, he rarely entered the water because it bothered his ears; but he felt at home here, perhaps because of its contrast to the city--its vastness, not unlike the plains of his native South Dakota. He often sat in his rattan chair with cigar and scotch, studying the Pacific landscape framed by the living-room window. Every day after work, he and Helen had “quiet hour,” time to sit alone and talk or quietly gaze out at the water.

Gary was 4 years old when the family moved in. His earliest memories begin shortly thereafter. He remembers climbing up on a shelf in his bedroom closet, where he lived in imaginary worlds, and crawling beneath the house, built on pilings, to his secret hiding place.

“Our parents would pretty much tell us to go out and play and to be back when the street lights came on,” Gary says. “It was a wonderful place to grow up.”

Some of the most important events in his life took place here. It is where he met Chris, who grew up on a dairy farm near Barstow and was staying with a great-aunt down the street while studying microbiology at Cal State Long Beach.

Years later, Chris and Gary were walking on the beach when the topic of children came up. Maybe it was time, they decided. And now they have three. Some important decisions in their lives have been made here. Through all the changes in their lives, the ocean has remained a constant, there for them in the same way it was there for Helen and Ivan at the end of each day.

When Gary is here, he can close his eyes and hear his mother’s voice calling him home as clearly as he can hear the waves; he can smell his father’s cigars. No matter what else happens in life, this will always be his home.

Multi-Generational Trip

On the day the Liggetts leave, teenager Rachel Cambon of Centreville, Va., arrives at the house with her grandmother, Judy West of McLean, Va., and West’s sister, Janet Comer of New Orleans.

Theirs is a family bound across generations. The main purpose of the trip is to spend time with Comer and West’s father, who lives in Huntington Beach, where they, too, lived as young children. Throughout the week they visit him twice a day, cooking for him and cleaning and tending to whatever needs they can in a week. They also spend time with two elderly aunts and West’s former mother-in-law, who was injured recently in a fall.

This is their fourth year of staying at the beach house, and so they notice the new furniture this year, new windows and bigger television. The house has come to feel familiar, and it’s almost like time stands still, says West, whenever she comes back. “I never think about going home when I’m here,” she says, “It feels like this is home.”

Staying at the house, rather than with relatives, allows them time to themselves. They spent one day in Hollywood and took a tour of stars’ homes, but for the most part they were at the house when they weren’t expected anywhere else. Rachel, 14, jogged and sunbathed. West, 56, and Comer, 57, read and went for walks. They went out to eat at night and usually turned in early.

It’s a good time to think, and Comer has been wondering how life will change upon her husband’s retirement at year’s end. She wondered how the new puppy, Gypsy, was doing at home in New Orleans. And she wondered, as clinical coordinator of the Department of Neurosurgery at Tulane University Medical School, how she will go about trying to fill two key vacancies on her staff when she returns to work.

“But I really try to not think about anything,” she says, “just sit back and enjoy. I shelled some lima beans from my aunt’s garden out here [on the deck] the other day, and it was one of the most peaceful times I’ve had since we got here.”

West, sales coordinator at a hotel, normally reads three newspapers each day at home, but here she reads none and changes the channel when the news comes on the television. The house allows them to face the ocean and turn their backs on the rest of the world. They forget about the threat of the West Nile virus, the kidnapping of young girls, Iraq. And they become lost in the clouds and ocean, dreams and lima beans.

As for young Rachel, who begins high school in the fall, much of what she wants in life is here. She dreams of becoming an actor, and at night, when she hears the sound of waves through her bedroom window, it’s like hearing a promise, as real as the wind.

At week’s end, when she left this house for home, it was with a Harley-Davidson T-shirt for her mother, a tan to make her the envy of friends and the unforgettable feeling of waves and her heart moving in perfect rhythm.

She can hardly wait to come back.