The Place

There is one place in the world that brings me back to center. The place is not a city or a house. It is an actual spot on the earth. Who knows if I will be able to touch that spot every year of my life, but I have every year of my life up to this one. At the dune's crest on this sandy path is that spot. Something there provides, for me, a unity of matter, love and eternity. I have only felt peace, happiness, or gratitude on that spot, never bitterness or emptiness. I see my beautiful grandmother standing on that spot, watching the ocean. I watch my aunts, uncles, parents, cousins, sisters and brother running past that spot year after year with diapers, buckets, flip flops, surf boards, and with children of their own. I see myself sitting on that spot, among the sea oats, admiring the sun or moon. That spot helps me transcend thoughts of "the world" and I reach, if only for moments, another kind of understanding. I have been a little child, a teenager, a young woman, a wife and a mother there, but on that very spot, somehow, I am always the same person; someone more whole and connected to everything else. It is my amazing place.