It’s December 23rd, 2009, a gorgeous day, the kind that makes your chest swell and ache at the beauty of it. Cloud-dappled skies and sugar crystal sand are the bookends of Huntington Beach where I am walking—the heels of my feet making dimples in the damp shoreline—with my brother, his wife, and new baby.

Crush, crush, crush. The waves lull me into a wakeful sleep, and I smile at the busker on the boardwalk who is earnestly strumming a song I can’t hear. Salt is everywhere—kissing my lips, knotting my hair, stinging my face—and I get the distinct feeling I’m being brined, like a pickle, like a turkey, like a pickled Christmas turkey.

In my periphery, a flash of crimson and white shocks my eyes. I am amused, when on the pier—it’s caterpillar network of sturdy beams stretching high above an expanse of churning, turquoise soup—Santa comes riding, not in a sleigh, but in the back of a cherry red pickup truck with the word, LIFEGAURD emblazoned across the side. A radical twist on the conventional costume, this Jolly Old St. Nick is wearing Rayban Wayfarers.

And I think to myself, “This is why I’m here.”

This is what Christmas in California looks like.

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Last time I visited Huntington Beach, it was Thanksgiving 2006. I was married. My brother was not. Tommy was healing from the heartbreak of a broken engagement. I was about to—unbeknownst to me, my adulterous ex-husband having orchestrated my absence so he could break bread with his mistresses’ family in Pittsburgh—suffer a similar misfortune.

Three years later, my brother is married. I am not.

I spent most every minute of the last eight days cradling, my arms wrapped tight in a protective swaddle, the form of my pudgy precious nephew. Colby’s stunning halo of flaxen curls and the delicious pink bloom on his cherubic cheeks transfixed me like a cobra charmed, and my heart—now that I’ve returned to Houston—hurts a little knowing I won’t see him again until summer.

Sure, Christmas in California looks like Santa in sunglasses. But it also looks like closed doors, fresh starts, new love, true love, and a beautiful baby boy.

I’ve only been gone a few days, but I miss them already.