The Sands of Time

This weekend I celebrated my 29th birthday. While most of my (younger) friends chastised me about my age, I openly expressed my wish to knock 29 outta the ring and just get to 30. I'm ready for 30, but now I have 362 days to wait, feeling like a sophomore. Unlike a lot of other people, I am thankful on every birthday that the choices I made over the past year didn't maim, torture or kill me. I am not afraid of getting "old."

I spent most of my childhood on the west end of Galveston. I always felt weird because we rarely lived in a house on the ground. I wanted so badly to be normal like my friends; I didn't want to live in a house on pilings (or "stilts" as non-house-on-piling-dwellers so frequently call them).

After I graduated from high school, my parents built a pretty sweet house on the west end, another one on pilings. While I was initially resistant, I ended up having some fabulous experiences over the next eight years visiting that house (golf-cart wrecks, late-night karaoke, jet skis, drunken pool parties...the list goes on). As it turns out, I happen to have some of the coolest parents in the world - who knew??? So when I lived in Arizona and received word that they sold their beach house to move to the mainland, I was crushed. Gone were the warm summer days in the pool, the intoxicating fragrance of jasmine and late nights under the stars in the hot tub. They now live in the house I always dreamed of in high school...

This weekend, I ventured down to Galveston for the first time in years. While Mom and Dad sold the ultimate party pad, they did keep their rental house in the same neighborhood. Several of my friends and I partied at the rental all weekend for my 29th, and coincidentally, it's just down the street from the old pad. Saddened to see traces of strangers at the house I last knew as "home," it was comforting to hear the same waves crashing as I sat on the rental balcony overlooking the bay. That sound will forever comfort me, wherever I am on the island.

So I spent my 29th birthday in style, making new memories in an old place. It felt good; it felt like home. No matter what changes take place in Galveston, I can still close my eyes and feel memories of good times. And I know that so long as the waves are crashing, there are still memories to be made.