Holiday Road: A Memoir

By Shelley Costello

Holiday Road is Bill Brysons Walk in the Woods meets Bridget Jones,
with a little yoga thrown in to mix things up a bit.
Grace takes her two children to California spending the summer
with her brother and sister.
After a somewhat chaotic life, Grace feels she is destined to meet
the elusive Mr Right, which becomes somewhat of a theme
throughout the story and sees Grace in several amusing incidents.
The laugh out loud heart warming story takes you through their
holiday: camping trip down the Highway 1 California coastal route,
days out and Graces visits to San Francisco to practise yoga.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Mar 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456874001

Shelley Costello

Shelley Costello is author of Holiday Road and the recently published Champagne Friday. Shelley is a devoted practitioner of Ashtanga Yoga and has written several articles for the international Yoga Magazine. She currently lives in England with her two children. Visit Shelley at www.shelleycostello.net

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Shelley Costello.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2011903095

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4568-7399-8

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4568-7398-1

ISBN: Ebook          978-1-4568-7400-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

For various reasons I’ve decided to change the names of everyone in this book. All the place names remain as they are, and any facts and figures mentioned in this book are as I understand them to be.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

0-800-644-6988

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

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301284

CONTENTS

Grace

Welcome to California

Ashtanga Yoga

Good News and Bad News

Cool

Garage Yoga

Fourth of July Weekend

Oyster Mushrooms,

Ashtanga, and Tarzan

Morning Campers!

A Concrete Ship, Castroville, and Monterey Beach

Laguna Seca Mazda Raceway

Grand Prix Campsite

Big Sur and McWay Falls

Plaskett Creek and Sand

Dollar Beach

Morro Rock and Gaviota Beach

Fifteenth of July

Disneyland and Vanessa’s

Tenth Birthday

Sequoia National Park

Another Practice

Lake Tahoe

Birthdays Barbeque

Lake Tahoe Revisited

San Francisco Zoo

One More Class

Long Way Down the Holiday Road

Ashtanga Yoga

For my brother Rich

Grace

I’ve been planning our trip to California for almost a year. It’s been six whole years since I visited during the summer months, and I am excited about having two whole months to enjoy spending time with my brother Tom and his family.

How part of my family ended up living in California is down to my sister, Kate, who met someone in the U.S. Air Force and moved there when she was just sixteen. She got Dad’s permission to get married (in the end) and move to California, had two beautiful boys, who are now twenty-one and twenty-two, got divorced, and became a successful real estate agent. She married again, and after a second divorce, she met Antonio, who lives in San Francisco and whom she has now been with for about a year. They hope to move in together sometime next year.

My brother Tom visited her when he was eighteen and, during his stay, fell in love with her best friend’s sister, Shelby. They were married soon after that, and Tom has lived there ever since. They have one child, Sam, who is twelve.

Kate became an American citizen long ago and petitioned for our parents to live over there. They emigrated two years ago, and rather than enjoying retirement, they now spend most of their time working, oh, and frequenting far too many casinos!

Up until four years ago, my life was pretty chaotic: moving from one bad relationship to another, and despite having a pretty successful career, I’ve always felt unfulfilled. Two failed marriages and two beautiful children later, I decided enough was enough and took stock of my life, became single, requalified myself, and became self-employed, working as a yoga teacher and life coach. This gives me lots of free time to tend to my children, Vanessa and Leon, and our home life, which, in itself, is a full-time job. Four years is a long time to be single, but during that time, I’ve been able to reconnect with my true self and discover my true passion in life: yoga.

I first discovered yoga shortly after my last relationship ended, when I joined a study group at the school where I started taking my coaching course. I mentioned to someone that I’d been reading about the natural laws of the universe and other self-improvement books, and they suggested I try yoga. Being the bookworm that I am, I bought a book and then soon realised that the only way to truly discover yoga is through practice. I joined a class soon after, took my teacher-qualification course, and have been practising ever since.

About a year ago, I started practising Ashtanga yoga, which is more physically demanding and consists of several series (levels). I practise the primary series four to six times a week, and my whole life really revolves around yoga in some way or another. For me, it isn’t just about the physical practice but actually living as a yogi too. This comes easy because having lived such a chaotic and destructive life for most of my adulthood, I feel I have ‘been there and done it and have enough T-shirts’ to last me a lifetime. It isn’t hard to make healthy choices; they just happen naturally—becoming a vegetarian, not drinking alcohol, eating a healthy, balanced diet, and surrounding myself with a lot of positive influences. I think I’m also doing my children a huge favour by introducing them to this way of thinking, and although I allow them to make their own choices, I know it’s all being absorbed and will benefit them enormously as they grow up.

So, being my own boss, I’ve decided we’ll take the whole summer out and spend it in California. I started saving shortly after the dismal summer we experienced a year ago. If you live in England, you’ll understand what I am talking about—you know, summers with little sunshine and a bucket load of rain. Everything we planned last summer was rained off, and despite going ahead with most of our days out, and having a good time regardless, we’ve decided that we want sunshine guaranteed.

Tom suggested we go on a camping trip while we are there. He and Shelby are going to plan their summer vacation around us being there, and so he has become the master planner in mapping out our assault along the California coastal highway.

There have been many times in my life when I’ve made a decision that I want to live in California. I first visited when I was just sixteen. My dad sent me because he and my mum were in complete despair over my wild child behaviour. I dismally failed my exams and was shipped off to California for three whole months during the summer of 1989. My dad said this would get me away from bad influences, and he entrusted me in to the care of my older sister, Kate. I have to say, I could think of worse places to be shipped off to.

I fell in love with California that summer, as well as a boy called Zac, and returned the following summer for another three months. I fell in love with a marine called William that time, but those trips had sowed the seeds, and part of my heart has always been in California since then.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing. If I had half the sense that I have now, I would have applied to emigrate back then. If Kate had sponsored me, the whole process would have taken between five and seven years, making me still only in my early twenties. However, it wasn’t meant to be, and there were so many other things that seemed far more exciting in my life that time just passed away. Shortly after the second summer in California, I met my first husband, and so, then began my twenty-year journey through the choppy waters of bad relationships and lots of destructive, chaotic behaviour to mix life up a little.

There was one time when I actually came very close to living there. I’d got back in touch with William (the marine I had met when I was seventeen) and left my first husband to fly over to California to meet him. Talk about whirlwind. It had been seven years since we’d seen each other, and he was in a completely different place than I was. He was a Christian and so, trying his best to do the ‘right thing’ (which wasn’t easy where I was concerned). He proposed, and I flew back home to finalise everything in England, but a week before the wedding, I called it off, and that was the end of that. I jumped straight into another relationship and off I went again.

I visited California several more times and have visited with Vanessa a couple of times when she was younger. It felt the same, and I wanted to live there, but it just didn’t seem like an option at the time and, of course, there was always some relationship going on in the background. The application process seemed to get more and more complicated, and for some reason, that now I just accept it obviously wasn’t meant to be at the time, it didn’t happen.

We last visited during Christmas 2007. One of my three other brothers and sister, who live in England (no, surprisingly we are not Catholic), came too, and we had a real family Christmas with our parents, Kate, Tom, and the rest of the family.

This summer visit, however, seems different somehow. I think, at some level of my being I hope I will meet the elusive ‘Mr Right’. I’ve not wanted to meet anyone before this point because I’ve been immersed in too much self-improvement and studying for the past four years to have any time for a relationship.

Since the age of fourteen, I’ve never been without a boyfriend. As soon as one relationship ended, another would begin; sometimes, although I hate to admit this, the relationship hadn’t even ended before I started a new one, but that’s another story. Suffice to say, for twenty years one relationship merged into another, and they seemed to become more dysfunctional as time went on.

Four years being single, therefore, has really been a much-needed break, and although I feel like I am becoming somewhat of a tree-hugging (I do love trees) bhikkhuni (female Buddhist monk) and a devoted yogini, I’ve retained my fire and passion and feel I could probably now find some time in my life for someone else. I’m also pretty happy and functional these days, so maybe the next relationship will be a long-lasting one. Living in a bubble of being the princess in a fairytale, waiting for my knight galloping in on his white horse! Most definitely, because despite having all those failed relationships, all I ever really wanted was to fall in love and live happily ever after.

Everything I’ve intended for myself over the past couple of years has manifested itself in my life somehow, and I have a strong feeling that this summer is going to make that dream of ‘happily ever after’ come true.

Welcome to California

My stomach feels like it’s jumping into my throat as the plane drops again, preparing to land. I look out of the window, see the bay below, and get that happy, tingly feeling in my stomach that only California seems to bring. The plane dips lower; my stomach flips again, and I can hear the noise of the landing gear engaging. It’s difficult to tell how high we are from the water, but it seems far too close to me. We must be landing soon, because if we don’t, I think we’ll actually plunge into the water. I look down, wondering whether the white surf is actually big waves that look small because we are so high up or whether we are actually going to nosedive at any moment. I remind myself that I am not scared of flying any more, take a deep breath in, and drag my eyes away from the window. Vanessa and Leon still have their earphones on even though the radio and TV have been turned off. Vanessa is madly sucking sweets because she insists it stops her ears from popping, any excuse I say. Leon is bouncing his blue ted up and down on his knee. I look out of the window again and wince as I think perhaps I was right to be scared of flying. How close is that water!

We bumpily touch down, and Vanessa and Leon giggle as they jolt forward in their seats. It’s just before 2.00 p.m. I silently thank God for not plunging me into the freezing cold bay water and breathe out.

The sun is now shining so brightly through the window that it’s blinding. I am really going to welcome this warm weather. There is nothing like California sunshine. I know there’s only one sun, but it’s never the same back home. I wonder sometimes if it’s the backdrop of the azure blue sky that does it. In England, the sun is never that bright and the sky never that blue.

‘I’m so excited about seeing everyone,’ Vanessa cries, clapping her hands.

‘Me too!’ Leon says excitedly, jumping up from his chair.

‘Sit down, Leon, just until we stop,’ I say, trying not to squash his excitement too much.

Leon is bouncy and reminds me of myself when I was younger. He has so much energy, and if that energy isn’t being channelled somehow, well, then it was just bouncing around the walls or environment we happen to be in at the time. My yoga teacher said to me once that boys are generally like that, but as time goes on, and I have met some of his school friends, I’ve begun to see that Leon really does have a little more energy than most boys. Not a bad thing, just not great when you are confined to the space of, say, an aircraft!

Despite his boundless energy, and me being his mother and obviously very biased, Leon definitely lives up to the ideal of his blond hair and blue eyes: utterly adorable, charming, sweet-natured, and loving. He’s very tall for his age and having Vanessa, who is four years older, I have to often remind myself he has only just turned six and still very much a little boy.

Our trip so far has gone perfectly: no delays and the flight has been a smooth one with no turbulence, which I am thankful for. Despite always having had a fear of flying, I have, over the past couple of years, managed to control this with some yogic breathing. The epiphany happened in 2006 over the Irish Sea, returning back to England after meeting my sister Kate in Ireland. I still drank back then and so, although my head was swimming in a shot of vodka to numb the flying fears, I spent most of the short flight with my head down, eyes closed, and gripping the seat so tightly, my knuckles were white. I was only there for a weekend and dreading, having to fly back home so soon. We had just taken off, and the panic quickly set in. I can’t really say what happened, but I suddenly realised that I was being totally irrational and then felt an overwhelming sense of calm, and the fear of falling 30,000 feet into the sea left me. Saying that, I think there is still a little fear there somewhere, especially landing in San Francisco where you have to come in to land over the water, but I am, however, pleased not to have needed to put my yogic breathing to good use during the flight!

We’re fortunate to be seated near to the front of the plane and, therefore, are some of the first to leave.

Our bags are already spinning around on the carousel as we head into the baggage claim area.

‘There it is!’ Leon exclaims, obviously having seen one of our cases, running towards the carousel.

‘He’ll never pull that off the carousel,’ I say to Vanessa, speeding up a little to reach Leon before he attempts it.

‘Well, he might, Mum, but he’ll pull himself over with it,’ she replies, giggling.

Vanessa is mature beyond her years. She is due to turn ten in a couple of weeks but often gives me advice and talks to me like she is the parent and I am the child. Like her brother, she is sweet-natured but very stubborn, and, with the sudden onset of a hormone rush, seems to be turning into a teenager far too many years before her time.

Quite the opposite of Leon, she has light brown hair and big green eyes, with eyelashes that put mine to shame. Her hair just reaches the small of her back, and I am immensely proud of the fact that she has such long, beautiful, curly hair.

When I was little, my hair was cut so short that I was often mistaken for a boy. In those days, the style was very much ‘page boy’, with a fringe; my hair just didn’t grow right and so was probably better off, short. As I grew up, I resented this enormously and never seemed to be able to grow my hair. Fortunately, it now sits at my shoulders. When I had Vanessa, I made a silent commitment to myself never to cut her hair and so, apart from the odd trim here and there, have left Vanessa’s hair to grow abundantly long.

We pick up our pace to catch Leon before he reaches the case.

We’ve travelled light, which is easier with it being summer, and in California, that means swimsuits, shorts, and flip-flops. We have so many pairs of flip-flops that between the three of us we could open a flip-flop shop. When we packed a week ago, Vanessa counted them on the bed, announcing that there were twenty-seven pairs! I’m not quite sure how we managed to accumulate so many, but each time I went shopping, I somehow seemed to find another pair, and then I think I just forgot how many pairs I’d already bought.

Our cases are also packed full of goodies. Whenever anyone visits California from England, they always ask ahead of time what they need to bring, and our trip is no exception. Although you can buy British food in America, you can’t buy everything, and because what you can buy is imported, it can be expensive. We have