B\o7EFORE\f7 \o7THE \f7summer ends, we thought we should get the children outdoors at least once. Introduce them to the sun. Familiarize them with fresh air. "Hey, Dad, what's that?" one will probably ask. "Sweetie, that's a tree," I'll answer.
I fear for the pasty-skinned children of America, who now shun the outdoors at every opportunity, content to sit inside and play Tetris all day on their cellphones or e-mail each other with catty comments.
Not my kids.
"We're going \o7where\f7?" the older daughter asks.
"Malibu," I explain.
"Yuck, Malibu," one of them says.
What could there ever be to do in Malibu? First, it's hemmed in on one side by a remarkable -- but pretty dull -- ocean. The other side is mountains and boutiques.
"Did Dad say 'boutiques'?" someone asks. And we're off.
We're house-sitting in Malibu, for about a week, and to spend a mere week in Malibu is like being squeezed fondly on the elbow by Marilyn Monroe. It's really not enough. But you remember it forever.
The air is sweet with salt and sage, the temperature just so. Malibu is what you get when you combine rustic beauty with near-perfect weather. So what if they don't have sewers.
"They don't?" my wife says.
"Maybe next year," I say.
But Malibu offers plenty of other pleasures. There is never "nothing to do" here. You can wander the beaches or climb the canyons. Ogle the local populace.
"I don't think they're all that great," my wife says after a trip to the grocery store for milk and ogling.
I don't know which populace she is seeing, but to me they all look pretty great. There is, it seems, a "Malibu look," a sort of Western Gatsby. Many of the men have wavy Michael Landon hair. Surfer hair, it appears thickened with dried seawater and various crustaceans, living and dead.
The women? They are almost equally as pretty. They are thin and supple as oak saplings. Many look like the young actress Kyra Sedgwick. Those are the grandmothers. It just goes up from there.
"I think that's Cindy Crawford," my daughter whispers one morning in the pet shop.
"No," I say.
"Look, the mole," she says.
When she turns around, I see the mole, the world's most famous living mole. She is in the pet store with a small entourage of kids, nannies, nutritionists, skin-care specialists, hairstylists, seamstresses, accountants and astrologers. Ah, the rich. They're richer than you and me.
