Cornfields to Coquina

I went home to Satellite Beach yesterday. I have decided to accept Satellite Beach as a home recently. Going there brings me so much peace and contentment and happiness that I can only associate with a homecoming. With an estranged sister, a father that won't call me and a dead mother, the physical space that was our home acts as a surrogate family. In fact, I feel more at home there than I do in J'burg. So I headed east.

I toured around town a bit taking pictures of the old pavilion where I first met Lisa, Yolanda (hee), Shannon and Tammie. Then I hit the beach. I ate my Pirates of The Caribbean happy meal along the Atlantic Shore, then popped on my iPod, cued up the 80's playlist and walked for miles down the beach. I was SO happy, I felt so detached from the present and lived in the joy of past memories - of wandering beach side with my friends, my mom upstairs, sister scowling in her room and my dad off at work. I was completely alone as I walked up where the officer's beachside housing used to be but now it's completely vacant. I did reflect as I turned back south and saw Sandpiper Towers in the distance. I stood between the worst sadness I've ever known and the place I'm at now and realized.."Oh girl, it's been worse."

My friend Kim came out to see me - her life is in a greater shambles than mine is right now. She went with me to Chicago and saw where I grew up there too. I said to her as I traipsed through sea fauna and crushed coquina, "Different from Northern Illinois, isn't it?"

She's an ex-military brat (Army) and so she was just at home on the shores of P.A.F.B. as I was and we talked a lot about the impermanence of military life. Though my father was out of the Air Force by the time I was born, our family moved seven times before I was 13 years old. Granted none of the moves were like a military family makes but when you're four, or seven or 10 the smallest move disrupts your entire social and education life. She told me how you learn, when you grow up in the military you learn don't "need" anyone because you re-establish your friends in every new town.

We spent the day out there and then drove home. I listened to "Here Comes The Rain Again" as I drove over the Pineda Causeway. I remember being in the yellow Sentra with my mother and she loved that song - one of the few hits of the day that she and I could agree on - and it came on as we drove on the causeway. I remember thinking - at 11 or 12 years old - that I would never forget that she turned the radio up. I knew how sick she was and it was a moment I was emotionally mature enough to put away as a keepsake in my mind. I felt so close to her as I drove over the bridge and I wasn't saddened but strengthened.

On the excessively boring Beeline expressway, my thoughts crept up on me again and I cried a little bit about not knowing what was happening or going to happen. I came home and took the sand and sea spray off my body and got ready for bed. I settled down, happy I had done something so completely for myself (and for the most part by myself).

I'm lucky, but while I go to my friends for support, I've hid my sadness and withdrawn from the closest people in my life. I resist calling my grandmother, my sister because I'm so overtaxed personally that I can't find the room to be the caring, loving sister and granddaughter I expect myself to be.