Still the same…

Summer of ‘83.

Bob Seger playing on the radio.

Little me, standing on the edge of the one lane wooden bridge, looking down to the man who’d recently promised he’d be my Dad in every way, I saw his assuring blue eyes, with arms wide open and smile so big.

Daddy Billy was a few feet below me as I mustered up the courage to leap into the water.

‘Just jump little girl, I’ll catch you! We’re gonna to learn how to swim today!’

(Stop- here’s where I could easily let my fingers dance on this keyboard and share with you countless times my Daddy Billy caught me, both when I jumped and most importantly, when I fell…but I’ll save those wonderful, heartwarming stories for another time)

So…back in ‘83.

I fell in love with water in my Daddy Billy’s arms.

I didn’t know it then, but that love would give me peace and familiarity as I, quite literally, moved through life.

By the time I wrapped elementary studies, I’d attended 11 schools.

I often wondered if my mom was running or chasing. I mostly just felt like we were roaming.

And many of the places I called home, for however long, were near or next to water. Water always gifted a sense of belonging to my surroundings, no matter how new I was or how long I’d be there.

One of the gifts of moving bank to bank and shoreline to shoreline was the ability to connect with nature in profound ways.

As a young child, wandering the docks on Florida’s Saint John’s River alone, I grew respect for wildlife with humility.

Knowing that beneath that black surface of water was an alligator that could do me in with just one bite, all the while appreciating the beautiful egrets nearby holding their space in the world, seemingly without fear of anything.

I turned double digits as a lonely child, living in a green shack on the banks of Lake Sara in Polk County, Florida. The inside of that shack boiled my young soul with things that, quite candidly, were just none of my business, but the lake…the lake and all of its wonders really did grow flowers inside of me.

Lake Sara gifted me my first little boat- a raft that came equipped with a trolling motor, although for whatever reason, I mostly remember using paddles to get where I needed to go in my little beloved water vessel.

Although Lake Sara also had many alligators and some serious snakes, I felt safe and free in that little boat, sucking on freshly plucked sugar cane alongside sweet ducklings…I can confidently tell you they were my very best friends.

It was also at Lake Sara that I’d climb a massive live oak tree near the shoreline and shoot targets with my BB gun…until I fell quite a few feet straight on my back, with no one around, and decided that was enough of that.

Although I never lived directly on the shores of the ocean, it’s my favorite of all. And I have a real need to be close to it and its magic in order to feel safe within my own soul.

My love for the ocean began in New Smyrna Beach- the place I’ll always call home.

Whether I was working on my never mastered surfboard pop-up, up to no good kicking around Flagler Avenue with my girlfriends, wearing my bikini under my school clothes so there’d be no afternoon sun wasted, or walking the shoreline in attempts to be seen by boys with cars…I was happy. I was unconfined.

The undeniable magic of the ocean…it’s so everlasting and fills me in ways that only it can.

Staring across waves, my heart feels wide open and free to feel what it needs without boundaries or interruptions.

Moving back to Tennessee in my latter part of high school placed me in the area of that beautiful creek in which I jumped so many years prior, as well as alongside the Tennessee River and its beloved Pickwick Lake.

While I was doing all of that moving in my early years, my Tennessee Boy husband was growing-up in the Pickwick Lake community and developing his own love of water.

Years later, we’d share ‘I love you’ for the first time at Pickwick…and make countless memories in the first boat we owned together, right on that lake.

Today, that boat calls Lake Lanier, Georgia home…we eventually moved to the area and it is where we later bid her farewell.

For as long as I remember, we’ve bonded with the need to live by water…and early on I knew that once my husband truly experienced saltwater, his soul would also crave it forever.

And here we are present day, close to the ocean and free in who we are on the insides.

I love the brackish canals that flow through the parts of Boca that never make it on postcards…the fusion of fresh and salt water that seems to understand my internal spirit.

Just like me, the backwater canal behind our house rises and falls with the moon. Most similarly, it is composed in the simplest of ways…a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Despite its location, water is my home.

Always, still the same.

Little Me…still the same. Pickwick Lake, Tennessee. My sweet husband grew up on this body of water. It would be more than a decade before I would meet him in this community and fall in love with him on this lake.