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Growing up, we always took our summer vacation over the Fourth of July holiday, and always at Daytona Beach. In my mind, there’s nothing more beautiful than fireworks over the ocean. I learned to swim in the ocean, but one year when I was 8 years old, the ocean got the better of me. Or, I should say, a riptide got me. Or rather, the float I was on. I’d been playing in the waves and went to my usual spot out in the swells to catch a good one, and the riptide took me out – about a mile.
Dad noticed and started swimming after me. He got to me a minute or so before the life guards. They had flotation devices attached to ropes. They caught up to us, signaled the truck on the beach, and they pulled us in. I wasn’t the only person rescued that day.
That was also the year I walked across an interstate – twice. But that’s another story.
I still love the ocean, although I don’t get to travel to the beach as much as I’d like.
And I never lost that sense of wonder of floating alone on the ocean, watching the beach get smaller in the distance, wondering why the lifeguards were swimming toward me. I had no idea of the danger. It was just me & the ocean, and I was content.
Writing is like that. It’s just me and the words, worlds that I create and watch and wonder at, and I am content.