home

Everyone has their place. That place that tugs at their soul, makes them feel calm and complete, happy and peaceful. For some people it's a particular house, known as home. They feel like they're on vacation in their backyard. I've moved too much to call a physical structure my home although the one my husband and I live in now is getting close. For other people it's a city, full of the people and activities they love. Sure, my town is great, but it's a bubble rarely penetrated by the outside world, leaving us stewing in our own ideas and personalities sometimes. Just gotta get out of it on occasion. And there are some big cities near here each with a unique vibe, but none of them hold anything for me. Some people love the mountains, especially around here. They go a little further north every winter and ski, or in the summer they hike, step carefully rock to rock on bubbling streams, and observe nature. It's beautiful up there, but too cold, and dirty, with lots of bugs. I like to camp but it's not a vacation to me, and it's not a place I feel compelled to go.

There's a mile-long stretch of glimmering white powdery sand and blue blue water down in the panhandle that pulls me, begs me, urges me to visit every year. As a child we'd go for a week every July to the same hotel on the same beach, and memories flood me there, from age 6 to 26, good and bad. That crazy bee that stung me, the time I met my friend from Alabama who came every year too, my first bikini-- pink zebra stripes, when my friend's little brother chased us with a bat, my first kiss at 14, taking my ex there and watching him get drunk in front of my parents, going there with my husband and feeling so... whole. I feel like a child and an adult there, remembering those days and recognizing the difference between then and now. Watching the waves roll back and forth, absorbing the blazingly hot sun on my spf 45-slavered skin, savoring the broiled crab claws and the strawberry daiquiris, and spending real time with the ones I love.

I don't know that I'll get to go this year. My parents are taking a long trip to see my aunt, a two-week RV drive, during the time we usually go. I'm not sure my husband and I can afford to go on our own, as much as we'd like to. Maybe we can get some friends together, but it just doesn't seem like it's going to happen.

There's a line connecting my soul to that beach, thrown out like a fishing line over this 350 mile distance, reeling me back to it. I can only fight it for so long until my little fins get tired.

Do you have a place like this? What makes it call out to you?