With the taste of salt in the air and the wind weaving a tangle of knots into my hair, I drop my shoes just out of reach of the tide and cross the line drawn in the sand by the ocean. That line that says do-not-cross-unless-you-want-to-get-your-feet-wet. Crossing that line to me feels like entering another dimension and brings with it the calming feeling of a complete absence of time. Be it June or December the water always feels cold unless I’ve had a lot to drink and then I’m knee deep in seconds. I wade out a bit, throw out my arms to embrace the wide expanse of waves that fade into stars at an unidentifiable horizon. To say that the ocean is my favorite place to be is so cliché it makes me want to throw up. Saying you love the beach to me feels like listing ice cream among your favorite things: terribly unoriginal and obvious. I am aware that there are people who do not like these things, but they are few and far between and honestly kind of baffling to me. Not loving the ocean would make me a completely different person, one I can’t imagine.
Despite the unfortunate circumstance of being born and raised in Arizona, my parents began bringing me to the beach when I was just six months old. My grandmother had a rule that no grandchild of hers would make it to a year without putting their feet in the ocean. It is a rule strictly abided in my family. For as long as I can remember the beach has been my favorite place. When I was young, it was my playground an infinite source of curiosities and adventures and a treasure trove of seashells which I brought home in fistfuls and cupped tightly to my ear believing in their power to not only play me the sounds of the ocean, but transport me back. As I grew up and began fiercely battling for every inch of independence I could get, it became a haven from my family. A place where I could escape them without disapproval and climb on the rocks of the breakers that stretched out into the ocean far enough my younger sister could not follow. Eventually I went away to college, not surprisingly I chose a university within six minutes of the ocean where many of the students live in beachfront property. But San Diego was not what I expected and after finally leaving a state that had never felt like home I found myself in a place I feared never would. Every time I worried I would never find my place, I was drawn to the beach. I loved it during the day but it was at night alone that I couldn’t stay away. I realized in time that the one constant in my life had always been this. At every age and every stage of my life I had always felt most at peace and the truest version of myself with my feet firmly planted in the sea. Being there gives me a kind of perspective that I lack anywhere else. Every time I stare out at the ocean I realize how small and insignificant my problems are and how just as it was there waiting for me 15 years ago it will be there again tomorrow. I think that kind of safety and security and peace within yourself is what you call home.
I wrote this piece for my travel writing class, this week we had to write about our "favorite destination". Through some unprecedented act of God I have yet to get homesick but writing this piece gave me a little twinge of longing. At least once a day I happen upon something that makes me miss something about home, or more often someone. For a moment I am gripped by a paralyzing fear as i wait for the dreadful (home)sickness to overtake me, for tears to come, for the panic of realizing the unfamiliarity of my own life. But then I remember a favorite quote of mine from Eat Pray when someone is afraid of that bittersweet "I miss you." They say "So miss me. Send light and love my way and then drop it and move on." Whenever I think about how far away the people who know my soul
the best are, the people who get me better than I get myself I stop waiting for the sickness to hit and I stop it. I take a moment to miss them but then remind myself that I will see them again. I focus all of my happiness, prayers, well wishes and love across the ocean to the people I love and then I remind myself that I am in Italy and I go get some peanut butter gelato.*All three of these photos are from an East Coast trip, circa Summer 09.
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