This week, I’ve returned to a beach I have known since childhood.
On our first morning, Dixy and I stepped out for a walk, and the moment my feet touched the sand, something inside me caught. The tide was low, the air soft, and I felt the years folding in on themselves—decades of footsteps layered here, mine among them.
This beach has known all my dogs.
Eloise, the greyhound—pure love—who raised our babies and could run so fast it seemed she might take flight, chasing frisbees over the tide line.
Gretl, the dachshund with the spirit of a chain-smoking novelist, once so determined to taste the beach that she ate a bellyful of sand and paid for it dearly.
Heidi, the princess, who watched the sun sink into the horizon with the calm of a queen on her throne.
Junebug, the spaniel, who walked beside me for hours without tiring.
Bunny, the tiny chi chi, unimpressed by the ocean but content to ride anywhere in her papoose.
And now Dixy—my farm dog, born to run in fields—finding her footing on a beach alive with waves, umbrellas, kites, and strangers. She has learned to love it, as I did long ago.
This stretch of coast has witnessed my greatest joys and my sharpest griefs. Here, I have laughed until my sides ached with family, and here, I have sat in silence with a heaviness so great I lay back on the bare sand, willing it to draw the ache out of me.
There is a permanence in the ground beneath me, and yet the sand shifts moment by moment—an endless reshaping I cannot hold but can always return to.
I carry with me a gallery of memories: the marsh shimmering at high tide; the drawbridge over the Intracoastal; the lighthouse etched against a fading sky; cicadas thrumming in the oaks; the wide, untamed horizon; the narrow back roads that wind away from the tourists; the seafood shacks hidden under live oaks thirty miles from town; the curve of the shoreline bending to Mother Nature’s will despite our efforts to contain her.
The salt air has a scent I can summon in an instant. The waves have a voice I can call to mind on any sleepless night.
And always, beneath it all, the deep, unshakable knowing: this place is part of me.