Will I remember?

It is now less than a month before I will be leaving for Miami. It feels like just yesterday that I set up this blog, got my fundraising pants on and things started getting real… but it felt like I had so much more time. With increasing excitement comes mounting nerves. This isn’t going to be the abstract anymore. I guess waiting is the hardest part now – like before giving a big presentation. It’s hard to settle my mind. I think it’s a fairly relatable feeling: you keep thinking about what’s coming next and if everything will go as planned. It’s hard to listen and concentrate on what’s around you because you’re too busy thinking… “will I remember everything?”

Right now my family and I are on vacation on Edisto Island, our little sanctuary that we visit at least once a year. We’ve come here every summer for at least ten of them, give or take. It’s a place with a million stories. In a way, it feels like the island has grown with me – and by that I mean it hasn’t changed at all – but I can think back to many moments when familiar places evolved in my thoughts and memories as I returned year after year to give them different meanings. For instance: we always stopped at this little easy store/gas station before we crossed the bridge – our traditional provider of redemptive slushies and a bag of Combos. But later, after I understood gas economics, this stop became the necessity before getting on the island (where there is but one gas option at a good 15 cents more per gallon). Another example: during my childhood, the bright beach moon was the beacon that told the all baby sea turtles which way to swim to their mothers. Not too many years later, the same moon made me wonder if the one I loved was gazing at the night sky and thinking about me too while we were apart.

I have a tattoo of a spiral on my right ankle. To me, it means: “experiencing the same things, but with different perspectives.” I once learned that the spiral is one of the only symbols in history that has not been taken by another group, institution or corporation and turned into a misrepresentation or perversion of it’s original meaning. For me also, it’s one of the only ideas that has stayed true and relevant despite the ever-changing world, and my 22 years of ever-changing brain chemistry.

So as we’re back here on Edisto, catching crabs with our bare hands, chasing down the ice-cream truck (which is more of an ice-cream rickshaw) by bike, playing nightly games of cutthroat Pictionary and listening to Mom deliberate on how to tell a sky-blue puzzle piece from a sea-blue puzzle piece, the idea behind the spiral tattoo rings louder than it has since the needle first broke skin. The future looms in a hopeful but uncertain way, and occasionally, when the sea breeze picks up, I become aware that this is probably my last summer on the island. On the beach I close my eyes and imagine that it is two or three months later. I wonder… what might my other senses behold if I were doing the same thing on South Beach? What different sounds, smells, languages? Will I still feel hopeful, like now, or will I be worrying about new relationships, new callings, new responsibilities and new inadequacies? So much of life will be the same in Miami as it is here, eating, sleeping, laughing, learning, thinking, praying, crying, typing… even beaching. In fact, more will probably be similar than it will be different. But I can’t pretend that the differences won’t be big enough to radically challenge my comfortable life. Will I remember the serenity of Edisto… this place that has always been the same? Life away from the island spins faster and faster each day – will I remember my home base of love, comfort, encouragement, and inspiration? Most importantly, will I remember that serenity lies in perspective?

I hope I will remember my sunscreen, at least.