Ft Myers Beach

 Sixteen or seventeen years ago we dug a mini van out of a snow storm and six of us drove twelve hours to the Florida panhandle.

It was February.

I had never seen the ocean before.

Jeans rolled up to my knees, sweatshirt heavy with cold saltwater. We held hands and jumped and let the ocean wash over us, under, around, through us.

I don't remember a single other detail about that first trip.

Except sweet Abby thought the sand was snow.

But the rest of my childhood was full of the ocean.

One year the tropical storm blew the window out of our condo.

Another year, it was the last vacation I would take with a crooked and scar-less back.  Before leaving the beach that year, Larry sat me down and told me as soon as we got home we'd be going for a check up.  September 11, 2001 was just a few days later.  I still remember how my sun tan lines were crooked in the exam room.

I have memory after memory from the beach, the ocean.  Memories of feelings of beauty, of falling in love.  I go to the ocean to feel small, to gain perspective, to remember how far I cannot see.

More than a few years ago now, Kat and I packed into my Ford Focus wagon and made an all day drive back to the Florida panhandle to meet the rest of our family.

We'd all come back to the beach to give our dad away.

We arrived just in time to join everyone leaving the beachfront condo to go on a dolphin cruise.  We didn't even go into the house.  Directly from the wagon to a mini van and onto a boat.  Sea spray.  Sunset.  Dolphins playing.

We drove back to the beach condo, but by then it was dark outside.

And we walked to the beach.  The sisters did.

In the pitch black night.

Until now, it remained the only beach memory we'd ever create, which could compare to the very first.

Because we go to the beach to remember we are small.  To remember we cannot see how far there is to go.  We go there, come here, to trust rhythm again.  God meets us there.

And only at night, when you can't see where the sea ends and the sky begins, the moon casts its reflection long onto the waves, nothing else makes sense.

Except tide.


This year, I took Judah to the beach.

I knew I had to, in the deepest part of my heart.  Not because we were running out of time.  Not because he was asking to go.  Selfishly, we had to go because my heart needed it.

I needed the ocean.

And I needed to be the one to introduce Judah to it. By myself, the one to put my seal on this experience.

We pinched pennies and searched for deals and were blessed with a gift of a house in south Florida.

Then eleven days ago, Judah and I boarded a plane with another mom and her daughter.  I walked through security at the Bluegrass airport just like I've done a million times before.  Breathing deeply for the first time in what felt like months, as I reminded myself.  My mantra.

I am capable.

We're going on an adventure! Judah would tell people.

"We are going to the beach!  We are going to fly on an airplane.  I am going to find seashells for Noni.  She is my grandmother."

We drove to the beach later after our flight landed and we got settled in the house.

My skin prickled with anticipation.  I could see the scenery had changed.  The air had changed.  We had arrived.  

However I had anticipated Judah would react to the ocean, I was wrong.  Wonderfully, delightfully wrong.

I didn't change him out of his shorts and underwear before walking up to the ocean for the first time, because I wondered if he would even want to get into the water.  I wondered if he would be scared, timid.  Foolishly, I wondered if he would not be like me.


But I was wrong.

Wonderfully, deliriously wrong.

Before I could even get him into his swimming trunks, Judah was running towards the water.  Kicking sand up with his feet without even a hint of hesitation.  And before I could stop him, before I could even decide if I should, he was waist deep in the ocean.  Water was spraying his face and small waves were crashing against the backs of his legs and he was running back up onto the shore asking for me to take his clothes off.

So I stripped him down to his underwear.

And he just kept playing.

And I watched, standing there letting the ocean kiss my ankles as my toes sunk deeper into the sand with each wave.

Tears welled in my eyes.  The ocean is in my child's heart, just like it is in mine.

Hot and salty, my insides rose to meet the sea, saying hello after so many years gone.  Welcome back, darling.

I've missed you.

Tears of pride and joy and gratefulness, pooling.

I am so thankful, so very thankful, I was able to provide this first experience for my son.  This small child who's made me brave, who's made me bold, who's brought me so much joy and helped me build so much strength.  What a gift to be able to share with him something made up of so much of my heart.

How will I cherish those first few moments, realizing what a big thing lives in Judah.