It's hard when the place you live is not the place you love. Harder still when you return to one from the other.
During the second week there, I met my cousin's five-year-old son Matthew at our rented cottage and walked with him over the dunes to the Lake Erie beach.
Before I could stop him, he gulped a mouthful of water and sprayed it in front of him as he jumped and rolled in the waves.
"I like lake waves," he said after spewing another stream for emphasis. "They taste better than ocean waves and they don't try to knock me over." In case I missed the absolute perfection of this day and place, he reminded me that pools have no waves and the sand scrunching between his toes was much nicer than rocks.
It was his first trip to the lake, but Matthew had absolute certainty that the entire package was created for his exclusive enjoyment.
When I told him it was a Great Lake, he readily agreed.
I got him to stop drinking the water, but could not otherwise exhaust his exuberant play until I insisted it was time to go. We had to make another trip back after dinner.
I know how he felt. Being among my family at the place I loved most as a child doesn't cause me to physically jump up and down and spit waves, but my exhilaration is no less intense.
The first night there, my nuclear family walked with me down the road to a firehall where I had spent many summer nights. There was a community dance going on with fathers dancing with daughters, brothers with sisters, ladies with neighbor ladies and every other possible combination. The movements were enthusiastic and often artless, but from 50 yards it was already clear folks were having fun.
The people we spotted from a distance wearing balloon animals on their heads were, of course, my cousins with their children... and grandchildren. A thousand miles and 35 years melted as if they never existed.
As the night wore on, it was impossible to see any of them talking and laughing without a glimpse of their parents. It was an unexpected joy to have my aunts and uncles back, if only in my mind.
In my parent's wedding reception pictures, my father is carrying his bride across the threshhold of a cottage his father was still building for them.
That cottage is now for sale for only the second time since my parents sold it 35 years ago. We made an offer which was accepted contingent on the sale of our house here. It's only a summer place. But it is my summer place.
So I'm back on St. Simons now, full of hope and ideas for my cottage next summer. I'm not willing to consider that it could be sold out from under us.
Finance and family says we've got to live in this area here for another year, so I'm not going to make any waves. I'll wait it out with my fingers crossed.
Like Matthew, I know my perfect place when I see it.


Copyright 2004 Judi Griggs