Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside...

Nothing suggests "home" as much as a mailbox at the end of a driveway. It says this is where we live, here is where you can find us. It's not a common sight in a town by the shore, in a grid of streets lined with houses that rotate their residents weekly. But there it was, a big black mailbox in front of the house across the street from our rented beach cottage. I can never remember all of the seven big bad sins, but if envy is one of them, then I was guilty of that every time I saw that mailbox. (I believe gluttony is another so we won't mention all of the M&Ms and mocha coconut lattes that passed my lips all week.) While we packed up the car to return home and leave the sand and surf behind, that mailbox taunted me. Those folks didn't have to leave. They could store their suitcases and not worry about keeping track of all their kids' toys so they wouldn't leave any behind. They could get up and head to work knowing they would return to their ocean view at the end of the day. Can you imagine? I can. And it makes my brain hurt with envy.

I find a whole lotta inspiration at the beach. What is it about the sound of the waves and the feel of sand in our toes that makes us feel reflective and stripped down to our bare bones? Maybe it's being at the edge with nowhere else to go, who knows. It just feels right. When it's time to leave after our week's stay, I am not someone you want to sit next to in a car for four hours. I am miserable. But once I'm home and unpacked, and have slept in my own bed with the sounds of my neighborhood outside the windows, I feel revived. I want to improve everything. My house, my job, my attitude. (This will last for a day or two, usually fading with the first grumpy soul I have to face when I return to work...) I wonder if I would hang on to that fresh, positive feeling every day if I lived near the shore? And will I get the chance to someday find out? Do I want it badly enough to make it happen?

I chose the path I'm on. I chose to not go to college, to work where I could and get the bills paid. I chose to rack up some credit card debt that I'm still paying for, and I chose to live in the moment and not the future, which is now. I chose to have a child, and I choose to do what it takes to keep her healthy and happy, which for now means settling for a unremarkable job that helps put the food on the table. I'm responsible for where I am, and I'm okay with that most of the time. I will keep on doing what I have to do to get my life and family in order. But sometimes...oh, sometimes. The if-onlys creep in and my mind bounces around in the coulda's, shoulda's, and why-me's. They bring out the worst in me, and I let them for a few minutes, and then they are gone. It's so easy to make ourselves victims and forget that we choose our own endings, like those books we read in junior high. I want my chapters to lead to a mailbox that has fewer bills and maybe some sand inside.