I grew up on this beach. It’s the beach I made drip castles with my mom. It’s the beach where I made both high school memories and mistakes. It’s the beach my husband asked me to be his wife. It’s the beach where my children first felt sand between their toes.
Traumatic events of the last year kept me away from this pristine shore for the longest stretch I can remember, but I had gotten used to my land-locked life. The desert mountains were my new home. I marveled at their beauty as often as I could. I took in their grandness as I took my children to preschool. I looked to their peaks when troubles came knocking at my door. I felt rest in their shadows.
Now, I live where it’s flat. There are no mountains in sight. The closest beach is hours away. Natural beauty is a bit harder to come by. It’s not a place I would have chosen to live, but military life has taught me to embrace the backdrop of our story.
I may not be drawn to these grassy fields like the lunar force of the tides, but it has become home.
It’s where my kid’s earliest memories of childhood are unfolding. This new location is hosting our chapters of this delicate phase— ones classified by both extreme exhaustion and radical beauty in raising tiny people.
We can embrace the nuances of new states and communities, or we can reject it and pine for the familiar shores left behind.
I choose to invest. I choose relationships. I choose experiences I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I choose to make this home as long as we have an address that bears the city’s name.
But, as I sat on the beach where I’ve spent so much of my life, I couldn’t help but feel the pull of the ocean drawing me into her peace. I couldn’t help but picture my life being played out once again more frequently on her shoreline.
I couldn’t help but wonder if the ocean was calling me home.
But, after two weeks of visiting the sand and waves, after two-weeks of nonstop fun at world-class theme parks, we stepped off the plane and into our house. Our four-year-old daughter said, “I’m glad to be home, mom.”
Because the old saying is true: Home is where you hang your hat. Or, in her case, her dress-up princess tiaras.
Maybe one day the shoreline will be the backdrop of my family’s story. For now, I am happy being tossed by the waves, transporting us to new places with new people, new lessons and new memories that make up the pages of our lives.
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