Wanderlust

The places you’ve been, still dream of, or long for

Apr 15, 2024

My watch vibrates, and I grin at the featured iPhoto memory. My hair is windblown or wet (or both). My face is bare except for sunscreen. My smile is enormous. Year after year after year of the same horizon with sunsets sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. Each March is full of these photo memories, and I stop what task I’m in the middle of to look and remember.

I haven’t been to this special family place in two years. But, if I close my eyes, I am on the blindingly white sand beach, granules so fine it’s as if I’m standing in all purpose flour. Wind blows hair coming loose from my ponytail across my cheek, and I tuck it behind my ear. Coconut sunscreen drifts to my nostrils. Salt covers my lips like chapstick. Waves curl on themselves and crash at a regular cadence, beckoning me to dance. I have spent one week of nearly every March since 1989 in Fort Myers Beach, FL.

Our family vacation to Florida was an escape every March from the long, harsh winters of Michigan, sometimes with my grandparents and other times just our family. My dad has been coming to the same small island since middle school, and my mom came with my dad’s family for the first time in high school. My first ice cream cone of the year was always at the Dairy Queen, bare feet on the sandy tile and wind whipping through open windows.

I wrote my first essay about Fort Myers Beach at age 12: digging my toes deep into the sandbar with my grandfather, waiting for a sand dollar to crawl across the tops of our feet. I wrote another story about parasailing for the first time, side by side with my brother, soaring with pelicans and looking for dolphins.

I convinced my friends in college that Fort Myers was the perfect spring break destination. We tumbled eight girls deep out of a suburban after driving all night straight onto the sand.

I flipped through my first bridal magazines on a beach chair a week after I got engaged. My husband and I tried stand up paddle boarding for the first time in the Gulf of Mexico. We flew with our 10 month old son in 2019 and then drove 12 hours with our 14 month old daughter and almost 3 year old son in 2022. Fort Myers Beach will always feel like home.

Hurricane Ian, Category 4, devastated Estero island on September 28, 2022. I read news reports, watched video footage, and cried to witness the restaurants, ice cream shops, beach stores, condos, and homes disappear under 15 feet of water. Although I’m a vacationer and not a full time resident, my heart still shattered.

I’m left to wonder: can you miss a place you know isn’t the same as it was (and never will be)?

I think about our family military moves and Nick’s deployment during COVID. I think about rebuilding my body after having babies and after back surgery. I think about leaving the paid workforce and transitioning to being home with my kiddos. I think about recreating myself and rebuilding my life time and time and time again.

What stays the same? The sun will rise and set. The sky will turn cotton candy. The breeze will move the tops of palm trees and wiggle through grass growing on the dunes. The moon will call to the Gulf, pulling the tide to swell and recede. I remind myself.

I don’t know when it will be safe to return, but I eagerly await our reunion. I can’t wait to build sand castles on the beach with my big preschoolers and let ice cream drip down our chins. We will fly kites so high in the afternoon breeze we’ll wonder how far away they can be spotted. I will cannonball into the pool and dive into the roaring waves. I will lick salt off my lips and rinse sand off my feet. I will stand on the balcony to greet the sun each morning and run to the beach to applaud the end of each day.

We are both strong. We both change. And maybe that’s ok.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Wanderlust."