SurfWriter Girls: May 2020

Friday, May 22, 2020

Friendship Keeps Us Connected

Makes Things Less Scary

Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel

In this time of social distancing friends are more important than ever. Thinking of the times we've spent together, we share ourselves and build our lives. And now – phoning, texting, Facebooking, waving from our windows – we reach out.

SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel just celebrated 10 years of friendship in April. It seems like we've been friends forever...an endless summer of new adventures. Patti's husband Greg calls us "two peas in a pod."

Famed artist Georgia O'Keeffe compared friendship to developing an artist's eye…and learning to recognize and value the small things.

Sunny has known her lifelong friend Cyn Mejia-Giudici since they were in elementary school in Seattle. Their dads were both in the Navy and the two families stayed close even when they moved to different states.

Sunny always laughs when she thinks of the adventure she and Cyn had when they were just out of high school and drove from SoCal to San Francisco in her 1966 Barracuda.

Seeing them drive away, her mom quickly loaded up the family car with Sunny's brothers and sisters and followed behind all the way to keep an eye on them.

Patti has childhood friends she still sees every year for an annual post-Thanksgiving Culver City High School girls' brunch.

Giving thanks for each other over glasses of wine, lifetimes and milestones are shared and celebrated.

As SurfWriter Girls, writing beach-themed stories, we've made amazing friends, including our mentor Tony Soriano, Surfrider Foundation Huntington/Seal Beach chapter advisor. Tony, an environmentalist, spends almost as much time cleaning the beach as surfing the waves.

Friends can come in all shapes and sizes, seem perfectly matched or total opposites. They know what we're thinking before we think it.

They see our flaws, but like us anyway, reminding us that – no matter the distance or danger – we will always be in their hearts.

And, like Calvin and Hobbes, they help to keep us safe.

SurfWriter Girls

Surf’n Beach Scene Magazine

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Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to this copyrighted material. Publications wishing to reprint it may contact them at surfwriter.girls@gmail.com Individuals and non-profit groups are welcome to post it on social media sites as long as credit is given.

Thursday, May 7, 2020

The Essential Things in Life

Flower Power

Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel

With everyone sheltering in place and having to make decisions about how to get everyday necessities like food, medicine – and that elusive commodity toilet paper – we’re also having to decide what's essential to us.

"I always have flowers in my budget," says SurfWriter Girls friend Kathleen Mulcahy. Even now she finds flowers for herself and her friends at the farmers market in Santa Monica just a few blocks from her home. They may not seem essential to some, but for Kathleen they're therapeutic.

Kathleen isn't alone in needing flowers in her life. French Impressionist Claude Monet said, "I must have flowers always and always."

Remembering her days living in Europe, Sunny says flowers are a part of people's everyday lives there. "You always see flower boxes on the windowsills and flowers in the gardens."

In Japan, where flower arranging is an art, people stroll in the parks to see the cherry blossoms in the spring.

Hawaiians gather flowers and make them into leis – a symbol of love and aloha – and give them as greetings.

At a time when some states are telling stores to sell only "essentials," it may be hard to determine what those are. What about art and gardening supplies to be creative, a board game, puzzle or video to share with the family, batteries for the TV remote or computer mouse to stay connected?