Seaside

My first experience of Florida as my new home was the beach on a bright, moonlit night. Even now, it seems like a scene from a movie, surreal and perfect. A cool, stiff breeze blew in from the ocean, followed by strands of low lying clouds that raced across the blacklight sky. Something oblivious to our party waited on the sand below to be forever etched into my memory.

My fiancee' had convinced me to accompany her and her parents to Florida that summer to help with a temporary move and assignment--refurbishing their rental property in North Palm Beach. I drove their huge Oldsmobile with my girlfriend riding shotgun. We followed the U-Haul truck her father drove with his wife beside him, both vehicles packed with suitcases, furniture, and cleaning supplies. The scenic trip from Tennessee was exciting; one romantic and dangerous interlude occurred during a driving rainstorm on a treacherous, curving mountain pass outside Chattanooga. Ah, the impetuousness of youth! Florida lay ahead, a destination I had dreamt about all my life, and I didn't have a care in the world.

We drove straight through and arrived in Palm Beach County around midnight. The lead car pulled over onto a two lane road banked by sand dunes and wheat grass and stopped. My new friends said they had a surprise for me. We walked down a steep path through the dunes and seagrape bushes to where the sand leveled out in the blue light. Foamy surf roared and broke thirty yards away in front of a rolling sheet of black satin whose end disappeared in the dark. A large boulder appeared to struggle in a hole on the beach. Its rubbery side flaps sprayed sand into the air. Someone shined a flashlight underneath. Wet ping-pong balls plopped down methodically into the pit it had dug. The huge, loggerhead turtle glanced up for a moment from her egg-laying work. Tears rolled down her cheeks. My future mother-in-law said, "They always weep like that. She's crying for joy!"

I looked around for a moment, taking in the sound, the waves, the moon-bright night, the rustling palms, all of God's creation, and then looked back at their happy faces. I understood perfectly.J. Wallace