smooth seas do not a skillful sailor make

it's that time again! the time when i post things i've written in previous lifetimes, ie: last semester. this little number originated in my 'feature writing' class. it was a personal essay assignment. topic: favorite place in the world. enjoy it. or hate it.

I hate clichés. I find them trite and corny. In my opinion, clichés epitomize the very essence of the words boredom and complacency and should be promptly eliminated from the English language. Unfortunately, there is no way to articulate what I want to without use of the idiom I just verbally thrashed. So with my hatred of clichés in mind I proclaim that I view the city of Galveston through rose-colored glasses. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that I view Galveston through a pair of glasses projecting the shade of three dozen roses, but then it wouldn’t be consistent with the cliché I love to hate.

Galveston is perfect to me. The murky, brown ocean, laden with seaweed and deceased jellyfish feels like an exotic oasis when I stick my feet in it. The shell-less sand, littered with glass and housing the occasional sand crab is the perfect canvas to craft the seven story sand castle that I’ve been mentally designing. The humid, salty air, so strong it knocks over chairs and carries sand into the eyes of innocent beach dwellers, acts as a catalyst making me feel invigorated and alive.

Galveston is perfect to me, it always has been. Since I was a small child my family’s annual trip to my grandmother’s beach front home was the highlight of my summer vacation. Complete with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings, the trips were a family affair akin to the size of a reunion. The five hour car ride seemed a small price to pay for five days of wave jumping, searching for sand dollars, hunting crabs and playing fierce games of monopoly with my cousins. The trip was a family institution, symbolizing the beginning of a new school year for me and reminding my parents why one family vacation a year was enough.

There were things we did every year like crabbing, shopping at the strand and visiting the water slides a few miles away from my grandmother’s neighborhood. There were things we tried once, like horseback riding on the beach, visiting a Titanic exhibit and cooking the crabs we caught at the bay, ourselves.

When I think about Galveston it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact reason it is my favorite place in the world. A flood of memories overtake my mind and I think back to an afternoon in Galveston when the sun was nowhere to be found. It was raining and my brother was sitting in a rocking chair playing a handheld video game; my sister lounged on the floor configuring the edges to a 1,000 piece puzzle with a box boasting a picturesque harbor scene. My mom and grandmother were in the kitchen taking orders for sandwiches and my grandfather had drafted my dad to help him outside on whatever project he had invented to keep busy.

I was downstairs, swinging on the wooden porch swing beneath my grandmother’s sea-blue house, clad only in a swimsuit and clutching my pail and shovel tightly. I would be the first ready when the sun decided to return from its hiding place behind the clouds. I remember dreading the moment my mother would remember she’d forgotten to apply my sunscreen before we headed to the beach, after the rain stopped. It was no use, she always remembered.