Recently, I escaped frozen Ohio for the beaches of South Padre Island, Texas to meet up with my West Coast sisters, an attempt at travel distance equity right on the Gulf of… oh never mind.
Turns out a short hop from Cleveland to Houston and another down to Brownsville made for an easy trip. Border guards everywhere when I landed prompted a closer look at the map which showed Brownsville right on the US – Mexico border. I hadn’t looked too closely at Brownsville, more concentrated on my final destination of the beach. A loquacious Uber driver took me through Brownsville toward the bridge to SPI. Along the way he pointed out the immigration center, a place where incoming immigrants stayed while waiting for a plane ticket from a family member. A group of people walked past us from the center toward the airport. He pointed out the curbside where an angry drunk American in an SUV plowed through a group of immigrants sitting on the curb waiting for a bus, killing eight.
We drove past tributaries full of fishers in waders, the slightly rainy weather perfect for fishing, then through Port Isabel, pointing out restaurants and the lime bus stops for the free shuttle around town, then over the Queen Isabella Causeway bridge, a low curving expanse slung over blue sea.
I arrived at our beachfront hotel way too early to check in, so I dumped my bags behind the desk and took a walk in the wind and sand and salt spray until I was chilled and hungry. Walked next door to a taco place for lunch and then sat in the hotel lobby among disconcertingly enormous and highly sexualized statues of mermaids, scrolling and charging. Hotel guests came and went with their Minnesotan accents and tiny lap dogs. They seemed to be on SPI for the winter. January isn’t hot on SPI but its still a good 60 degrees warmer than home. I eavesdropped on their conversations about the evils of California and its widening influence.
“You can’t even buy a camper in California anymore!” they sputtered, looking to me for a nod of support and disgust. I don’t know if that’s true or not, and don’t care. I also didn’t mention that I was from California originally or that one of the sisters I waited for was coming from there. I don’t have it in me to take on the cultural divide.
Check-in time arrived slightly ahead of the sisters. As I settled into our room, I heard voices down the hall that sounded like my mother and myself. The sound of all of us. I threw open the hotel room door before they could swipe their key.
“I heard you coming!” I laughed. We stood in our room slightly amazed at the beachfront view out the window. Past the pool and jacuzzi, a boardwalk led directly to a huge beach, pounded by stormy waves.
The next morning a blazing orange and fuchsia sunrise filled our room while grackles sang. We couldn’t believe our luck.
As it turned out, SPI is where people go to watch the space launch which was happening that day. Who knew? Not us. After seeking advice about the best place to watch (the breakfast buffet room! the top of the parking garage! IYKYK!), we followed the crowd down the beach to the southern tip of the island, climbed up a small dune and watched a spindly little rocket waver its way into the air and separate. It was cool but somehow underwhelming. The booster returned successfully to the launch pad, which seemed like a feat of applied science, while the rocket went on to explode over Florida, almost hitting planes full of people. After the explosion and life-threatening near-miss, Musk announced on X that ‘success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!’
And that is how it seemed. More failures than successes still drew hordes of people. Miles of traffic leaving Isla Blanca Park to Queen Isabella Causeway, traffic police everywhere, and then it hit me. It’s the attention. Not the advancement of science. Not the perfection of space travel. But a continual launching of dangerous janky toys for entertainment. What is our attention worth?
The next day we rented big fat-tired bikes and rode right out onto the hard-packed sand by the water. The wind was behind us as we pushed slowly down the beach, inwardly bemoaning the shells littering the sand that I wouldn’t be able to inspect from the bike seat. As slow as we were going, it was still too fast to beachcomb. We arrived at the end of the strip, past the fancy houses to the beachfront hotel bars, parked the bikes, and found lunch. Beside the water, sun and shadow, waves. Birds and wind. Sisters and nachos. An afternoon that cracked something open deep inside and all of those things wash through like a laundry cycle for the soul. But we had to bike back, into the wind. After a half an hour, we had passed two hotels. People walked past us as we struggled.
“Looks like hard work!” they laughed, so we bailed and biked down the side street. We made up for the hard work with glorious tapas and wine, watching the sunset.
On the ride back to the airport, a different Uber driver filled us in on the realities of Musk’s space launch activities. He was pushing for twice monthly launches. The foundations of buildings and homes in Port Isabel were cracking from the force, windows liquify when the sound waves hit, and real estate was rapidly devaluing, despite the influx of west coasters buying up relatively affordable beachfront property. A huge gas plant was being built right next to the launch site. What could possibly go wrong?
Back in the freezing, on Zoom, a friend from LA said, “I would love to go to South Padre Island but it’s in TEXAS!” he groaned. The cultural divide goes both ways, I guess.
I should end with some profound statement about breeching the divide, about how family is more important than politics. I go back and forth on it. How to create boundaries with people who support the suffering of others? Who seemed unperturbed by a Nazi salute flung at the inauguration and ICE raids? How could I possibly justify letting politics separate me from people I love? The people who, at the end of time, are all that is left for me?
I am choosing to set my boundaries with the only thing I can control, which is where I allow my attention to go.
