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Charley Harrison was 14 years old and a drummer. He started playing Taiko with his mother and siblings in the Watsonville Taiko Band when he was seven years old. He played in the marching band, the jazz band, the concert band, and a metal band outside school. When I walked into the band room, he'd often be practicing just for joy -- but he was not the only one who did that. He was silly and lively and young.
He was playing in the surf at Natural Bridges Beach with friends on Saturday, the first day of spring break. People on the cliff saw three boys swim out to catch a bigger wave and two come back. One of the watchers was next to the 911 call box on the cliff and called right away. Rescue workers looked for him for three hours.
Today as many band kids as could be contacted, some of their parents, the band director and the vice principal (also a band parent)met in the band room. Mostly it was crying quietly. Some of it was talking. His family came -- mother, father, big sister, little brother. They had just come from the parking lot at Natural Bridges where his metal band and surfing friends had made a memorial. There are a lot of those memorials along the cliff. The wooden stair heads have had names and dates and mottoes carved in them with routers. Real and plastic flowers tied to the railings on the cliffs. Graffitti. You can donate money to the city and get somebody's name carved into a wooden bench looking out over the bay.
Somebody had called the hospice for a grief counselor who specializes in kids. She was giving them advice: mostly giving them permission to grieve in whatever way they needed to, which may have been unecessary in this group. But she was also another person to pass tissues and to hold crying kids or their parents. Some of them wrote "messages for Charley" and then they were burnt in a wok outside the band room. Temo,who plays low bass and will be drum major next year, quietly went through the motions of one of those modern syncretic native rituals, another boy was clearly doing some other ritual he had picked up somewhere outside a church. Temo let it be known that his Azteca dance group would be sanctifying their next rehearsals as prayers for Charley. Dustin, the senior drummer, decorated a retired cymbal (the kind from a drum set) with Charley's name and some remarks and said it was the symbol of how awesome Charley was. This looks flippant, but it's not. It's in keeping with band culture.
I asked the hospice person how many of these she gets each year and all she would say was "too many." I asked Christie, the band director how many she had lost, and she said two: the other was Shalimar, three years ago, who had also been mine, the girl who walked on the rocks when the waves were high. She said her predecessor and mentor, Mr. Mac, had lost two in thirty years of teaching. She said it was more than enough.
One of the band mothers had brought a camera with her to all the band reviews she'd gone to. She'd taken many pictures of Charley because he was so lively and -- well -- cute, honestly. She brought in a handful of them. She took some extra time to print the most beautiful one in a larger format and frame it. He was in the new uniform, helemtless, grinning, his "almond-shaped" eyes(really shaped more like croissants) squeezed in laughter. His mother caressed the picture.
All I want to do is tear the manuscript out and edit it all out, go back to the time before the boys swam out to the wave, and have them turn around before they got to the riptide.
He was playing in the surf at Natural Bridges Beach with friends on Saturday, the first day of spring break. People on the cliff saw three boys swim out to catch a bigger wave and two come back. One of the watchers was next to the 911 call box on the cliff and called right away. Rescue workers looked for him for three hours.
Today as many band kids as could be contacted, some of their parents, the band director and the vice principal (also a band parent)met in the band room. Mostly it was crying quietly. Some of it was talking. His family came -- mother, father, big sister, little brother. They had just come from the parking lot at Natural Bridges where his metal band and surfing friends had made a memorial. There are a lot of those memorials along the cliff. The wooden stair heads have had names and dates and mottoes carved in them with routers. Real and plastic flowers tied to the railings on the cliffs. Graffitti. You can donate money to the city and get somebody's name carved into a wooden bench looking out over the bay.
Somebody had called the hospice for a grief counselor who specializes in kids. She was giving them advice: mostly giving them permission to grieve in whatever way they needed to, which may have been unecessary in this group. But she was also another person to pass tissues and to hold crying kids or their parents. Some of them wrote "messages for Charley" and then they were burnt in a wok outside the band room. Temo,who plays low bass and will be drum major next year, quietly went through the motions of one of those modern syncretic native rituals, another boy was clearly doing some other ritual he had picked up somewhere outside a church. Temo let it be known that his Azteca dance group would be sanctifying their next rehearsals as prayers for Charley. Dustin, the senior drummer, decorated a retired cymbal (the kind from a drum set) with Charley's name and some remarks and said it was the symbol of how awesome Charley was. This looks flippant, but it's not. It's in keeping with band culture.
I asked the hospice person how many of these she gets each year and all she would say was "too many." I asked Christie, the band director how many she had lost, and she said two: the other was Shalimar, three years ago, who had also been mine, the girl who walked on the rocks when the waves were high. She said her predecessor and mentor, Mr. Mac, had lost two in thirty years of teaching. She said it was more than enough.
One of the band mothers had brought a camera with her to all the band reviews she'd gone to. She'd taken many pictures of Charley because he was so lively and -- well -- cute, honestly. She brought in a handful of them. She took some extra time to print the most beautiful one in a larger format and frame it. He was in the new uniform, helemtless, grinning, his "almond-shaped" eyes(really shaped more like croissants) squeezed in laughter. His mother caressed the picture.
All I want to do is tear the manuscript out and edit it all out, go back to the time before the boys swam out to the wave, and have them turn around before they got to the riptide.
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