“Let my toes teach the shore
how to feel a tranquil life
through the wetness of sands”
 Munia Khan

The sea was rarely very far from where I grew up. My father's Navy career saw to that. In fact, the only time I wasn't near the sea was while he was stationed in Great Lakes, Illinois. But there we even had Lake Michigan, which mariners refer to as an inland sea.

Some of my earliest memories are of frolics on the warm, sandy beaches of Puerto Rico with my brother Steve. I have pictures of us building sand castles and wading into the water holding my dad's hand. There's a picture of me wearing a cute little blue and white gingham bathing suit, sitting on the side of my parents' old clunker, drinking a bottle of Coke that was almost a quarter my size.

I remember Puerto Rican pig roasts, beach parties, and the sight of giant Portuguese Men of War floating just beyond the fence that prevented them from coming too close to shore. Sometimes their tentacles found their way through the fence anyway and stung the unwary. There were strange “sticky weeds” that somehow never got painful until we found ourselves in the middle of the patch. Then Dad would have to come rescue us. Wearing flip flops, of course. And there were the inevitable sun burns at the end of the day.

I remember the beaches of the Florida Panhandle when Dad was stationed at Pensacola for training, always white and littered with shells. I can still see the starfish through the rippling water at my feet. I can still imagine what it was like to sit in the sand and allow the water to gently lift me up and down as it rolled ashore. They tell me that there were dolphins just offshore but I was always too intent on what was going on around my feet to notice anything else.

I remember long drives along the Outer Banks of North Carolina when it was still largely uninhabited. The Kitty Hawk Memorial was literally in the middle of nowhere. We once visited Cape Hatteras and climbed inside the lighthouse. Something that is no longer allowed. Steve and I rushed on ahead of our parents as they carried our two younger brothers. Half way up, Mitch looked over the banister and froze, screaming in panic at the distance to the ground. His cries echoed hollowly and I'm sure would have been heard by anyone close by had there been anyone. Hard to believe but we had the place to ourselves. I can't imagine that happening these days. At the top Steve and I tried in vain to figure out how to turn on the giant light. The sea breeze was warm and fragrant.

Later we were stationed on Adak Island in the Alaskan Aleutians. There the bay was bounded by jagged mountains and the beach was covered with dark, volcanic sand. A volcano, Mt. Sitkan, was visible on rare clear days. The water was too cold to swim in, though there were some fools who occasionally challenged one another to take a polar bear plunge. I'm told there were some who insisted on being baptized in the water but I never actually saw it for myself.

The beach was always littered with kelp and the occasional Japanese glass fishing floats. Just offshore birds, including arctic tern and puffins, would search for a meal as eagles flew overhead, while sea otters would float, cracking open clams on rocks they held on their bellies. Sometimes we were lucky enough to see one with a pup. When we were very lucky, we would see an orca arc across the top of the water.

I spent many happy hours on those Adakian beaches. Sometimes playing with my dog or hidden in the grasses of the dunes with my closest friends. It was there that I would regale them with the latest installment of the story that would eventually become the first book I ever wrote. Over the course of a school year I wrote of Iris and her friends with typical teenage angst. Of course, she died at the end. That was before I learned how to write a happy ending.

The shore has always held a special place in my heart because I spent so much of my youth there. I have so many memories. I miss living near a beach and often dream of taking a plane to some destination where I can be in touch once again with the child that I was. Perhaps the Gulf Shore or back to the Outer Banks. Or who knows? Maybe I'll even return to Adak one day and watch the otters play and the eagles fly on a stiff, Aleutian breeze, breathing in the scent of the sea that remained the same wherever I found the shore.

c. 2026