Thinking about manatees

As I get older, I look for places that are comfort in the dark times.

This Monday finds me on Sanibel Island, where I’ve been going with family and friends for thirty-five years now, over half my life. Yesterday, as I sat on our balcony looking out at the Gulf of Mexico, I made a list of my greatest hits—my very best memories of being here. It was a long list. I’ve been here with high school friends and college friends and Madison friends. I came here with my parents and then as a parent. When we first started coming, we would cram seven people into the tiny little cottages that sit on the beach and bless my parents for the patience that must have taken. When did anyone use the bathroom?

Sunset, but see that cottage? We fit 7 people in there, I think even more some years? How?

Okay, but the greatest hits. The year we brought our daughter and a friend for her graduation present and swam just off the shore with a manatee, which kept bumping against our legs underwater. The first time I came with my husband. The year in our teens when we stole a sign from the beach and buried it in the sand. The time when my dad had to fly home for a medical treatment and I came down to stay with my mom, just the two of us in a house we rented. I was into Pokemon Go, so I rode my bike all around the island, catching Pokemon and we got take-out from a chicken place. The year I was on sabbatical, so I stayed on after my husband and daughter went home with my sister and nieces. Last year when the semester ended early and we drove down instead of flying because of Covid and spent two weeks here, the first with our friends, and it was the perfect refuge from the world. The February before Covid hit, when we were here with our parents, puzzled by the panic about this virus thing, the last moments before the world changed forever.

If there’s a theme to the best memories, they’re not surprisingly about the people we were with. But also about refuge. Especially as I get older, I see how this place is a comfort in dark times. A second home, but without any of the expectations that find you there. There’s nothing to clean here. No to-do list. There are things to do here. Things we could do. But when people ask us what we do when we come here, we smile and say, “Nothing.” And it is an incredible privilege and also the truth.

So I’m thinking about places as refuge. As healing and comfort. And that’s all, because the beach and my pile of books are calling, friends.

What places give you refuge and comfort?

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