This morning it felt strange to leave the house fully clothed. In the shower I lingered over the marks of ten days of freedom. There are freckles on my nose and on my shoulders. My skin is a pinkish shade of brown, slightly peeling just below my collarbone. There is a gash on the inside of my right knee, a souvenir from biking in the mountains, and cuts on the bottom of my right foot from my run-in with a reef of coral while surfing in a kayak. The tops of my feet are crossed with lines of red and white from the hiking sandals that carried me over rocks and hills until I discarded them in the brush to swim beneath a waterfall. I love the white lines around my back and behind my neck from my swimsuit top, around my hips from my low-slung board shorts.

Perhaps I’ll write more later, so I don’t fear that I’ll forget the things that meant the most to me. I’ll want to remember looking into the eyes of a sea turtle in his pointy, prehistoric face as he surfaced for air, shell gently brushing past my finger tips. The sight of a pod of resting Spinners below, the breeching of the humpbacks, the rooster outside the window, my wake-up call. Then of course the sunrise from the fairway off of the porch with a steaming cup of Kona in my hands, and yes, $32 per pound was well worth it. The mangos and pineapples with every meal, the tiny Vietnamese and Thai restaurants, the views of the pipeline on the North Shore, and the feeling of driving with the windows down, scantily clad, tasting the salt in the air and squinting in the sun. I wrote names in the sand and watched them wash away. I climbed to the farthest point of a jetty and felt the spray of the waves and then the rain poured, leaving me to clamber and trip my way back to the beach. The walks to the beach at night, under the brightest of moons, sitting on the rocks hearing only the hack and the spit of the water and the faintest of reels and plops from a single fisherman who, when I squinted, reminded me of one that I’d never see again.

When I finally dragged my travel-weary and luggage-laden self into my house yesterday, I suspected that I’d been burgled. My house was like a scene for a movie where the lead returns home to discover that some diabolical force has entered the home in search of an important artifact or some such nonsense, and succeeded merely in tossing items from the garbage can all over the house, opening dresser drawers and hanging the clothes throughout rooms like streamers, tearing cushions off of the couch, and pulling all the items out of the kitchen cupboards. Then I realized that no, I hadn’t been burgled, I must’ve left it like that. And it's snowing outside.

*Sigh*

I am, strangely, happy to be home. Happy to wake up with two furry bodies next to me. Happy to see and speak to my friends. Happy to be here for my mother who, I discovered, had been hospitalized while I was away. Happy to discover a bonus check on my desk this morning at work.

This morning I found sand in the pages of Waugh.