Heroes Among Us

I took my first trip to the ocean in September 2005. I was 28 years old. Yes, it is true. The longer you wait for something, the more amazing it seems. Every year about this time, I get an unexplicable urge to recreate the day my eyes met the sea.

For me the sea is a refuge, a place to pretend nothing else is happening in the world, only my presence in it. Nothing else matters.

God’s fingerprints are all over this earth. I see it every day as I drive across the rolling Plains of northeastern Oklahoma. “Green Country” as we call it, is a sight to behold in springtime. I walk outside my home and see the beauty of wildflowers and Magnolia and Redbud trees. I see it in the faces of my grandparents and in my niece and nephew, who are toddlers. And in my little hometown, nestled in a valley between two rivers, I see beauty at every turn.

But the ocean?

It has a gravitational pull on my soul, and within seconds of arriving, I am revitalized and refreshed and more alive. There’s just something about it that, by default, I become very introspective.

Traveling to the sea helps me remember how amazing my everyday life is and how I can’t, I won’t, forget the things that matter most at home.

Things I love about my favorite spot on the Carolina coast

• The lullaby of the rippling waves.
• The screech of the sea gulls.
• Twilight walks on the pier.
• The buzz of people on the boardwalk.
• Being one of the first people in the U.S. to see the sun peek from its perch on the horizon.
• Shrimp boats in the distance.
• Ferry rides to a hole-in-the wall lunch spot.
• No shoes.
• No make-up.
• No itinerary.
• Picking up seashells.
• Big sun hats.
• Watching a child try to outrun the waves.
• Opening the hotel’s balcony door at 3 a.m. just so the waves will rock me back to sleep.
• Little diners with biscuits and gravy.
• Colorful vacation homes.
• The private spot on the sand… far away from everyone else, but close enough for people watching.
• The kinship between all the tourists, because we are all in on the secret of this small beach town, which is devoid of huge crowds and massive development.
• Casting from the shore.
• Pretending to be an all-star fisherman woman.
• How the endless water seems as though it meets up with the sky.
• The smell of saltwater.
• Saltwater hair.
• Watching the surfers fall, try again and succeed.
• Old men with metal detectors.
• Ruffle-butt swimsuits.
• Hot dogs from the pier shop.
• Chintzy T-shirts,  keychains and postcards.
• Picking a sunny spot and thinking about all the people who have been in that exact same spot over time. Wondering what they were like and what they were thinking. Were they thinking about the same things I am?
• The way the sun glistens on the water.
• The way the moon glistens on the water.
• Walking along the water in the evening, with only the moonlight as a guide.
• Quietly sitting in a chair and staring at the dark sea.
• Holding someone’s hand while quietly sitting in a chair and staring at the dark sea.
• The day before the last day… and hoping it rewinds itself and repeats over and over and over again.

****A couple of times a week, I’ll share my favorite room/place of the moment. That’s the great thing about daydreams, you can have them as often as you want! Favorites weren’t meant to have limits.

All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in
the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the morning to find
that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people,
for they dream their dreams with open eyes, and make them come true.
--T.E. Lawrence (AKA Lawrence of Arabia)

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