Virginia Beach is my heart’s home. The ocean there is perfect, regardless of the temperature or the crowds.
My earliest memories are etched into that wet sand, the water rushing over my crawling feet; sitting with my siblings, constructing castles and miniature ‘lakes’ for the tide to claim. I remember cartwheeling across the beach, running free along the water, and discovering quiet Tide Pools during the solitary chill of winter walks.
But the truest magic was always my grandparents. Now, the sharp, briney scent of the sea is simply the smell of my favorite people. It is the legacy I now pass down to my daughter. Our Christmastime ritual was driving the sparkling boardwalk, listening to carols with the heat on and the window cracked, letting the sound of the waves mingle with the music. While I adore the snow, the silence, the fat flakes, the brilliant white, it is telling that my most cherished place to be with my daughter is the one place I have never seen it fall.
Now, thanks to my husband, I see the ocean every year. Though we walk the beaches of Florida instead of Virginia, watching my daughter run with her cousins is like looking into the past, and my heart is incredibly full. I never knew something so broken, so cracked, could ever inflate again.
But the past did not define me, or her, and the present is ever-changing. The person I was before is gone; she no longer exists. My daughter, with her new name and new life, runs free with me. It took years. But now we feel the sand sting our faces, the salt kiss our lips, and the sun warm our hair—grounded, healed, and ready for whatever tide comes in the next chapter.
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