Summertime blues.

Mom said to us, when packing us into the car when we were very small, "You girls should just go to sleep. We're going to a very special McDonald's that is far away, and when you wake up we'll be there".

MidSis and LilSis were lulled to sleep by the rocking of the car, while I, being older and wise to the wiles of my parents stayed half awake.

Half awake long enough to exclaim, somewhere around midnight:

"We aren't going to McDonald's, we're going to the beach!" as I saw the signs for Jekyll Island.

It will always be my home. And I don't really care what anyone else in the family says, or whines about the lack of beach. You want a beach? Go somewhere else. It's not why we go. We go because this island is our childhood, and at the risk of repeating some overripe imagery, that damn ocean is our mother (and now parts of our grandfather). Those dunes? mountains to us as children (albeit forbidden as were the sea oats). Bike trails on the inner island? forbidden fruit as they were dangerous and untravelled. The pier? always a great treat and spooky at night, where you could listen to the song of the river as it lapped against the pillar, and forced its way into Clam Creek. Once or twice, you'd interrupt folk spear fishing in Clam Creek (crazy - snakes, sharks, muskrats and gators). And the Jekyll Island Hotel...ah, when we were kids, that hotel was literally an old lady with cats. It was hazardous to your health, and you didn't get too close because you didn't know what would happen. Shingles plunged to their death with great abandon. Ghosts regularly rocked on the porch chairs; nevermind that the chairs had long since rotted. There were rumors of drowned millionaire's kids, ghost horses, dead slaves and Indians. I think the hotel was closed much of my childhood (at one point there was a lending library in the basement?), and it was only in the much later (post high school graduation years) that it really took off and the entire historic district redone. If you get a chance, go. Look for granddaddy's brick at the Turtle Center (and do email me a photo).

As a child, you used to be able to buy shrimp off the pier that is now reserved for yachts. Fucking gentrification. We used to unroll the seining net on the shore and wade out into the water and fish, just for the heck of it. Me, MidSis, LilSis, CozAmes, Bullfrog and I all ran amok! We had tans, and we ran up and down the beach, and threw sand at each other, and built castles, and rode bikes, and skated, and ate ice cream, and play Laser Tag, and Monopoly, and Risk, and Trivial Pursuit, and had grandmom wiggle out loose teeth, and spent nights in the really cold ass basement room on the sofa bed, and had Spaghetti Wars, and had problems with bottle rockets, and broken arms, and Little Pink Houses.

Don't ask me to go to another beach and make it my home. You can't trade in all those memories; and I'm not interested in going to St. George (and no offense, but to me the Gulf is a bit like eating popcorn; it fills you up for the moment, but does do anything to satisfy the real hunger).