My Southern Retreat
Every summer from 1998 to 2002, my family and I revived our spirits from the rigors of every day life and retreated to our beach house. My mother Sandra, my step-father Anthony, and my younger brother Matthew would vacation to our beach house on the Isle of Palms in Charleston, South Carolina. The house was sort of a safe haven, where I would reflect on my thoughts and life up until the previous summer. As a nineteen year old adult now, when I reflect on those summers spent at that house, I relive different emotions and thoughts. I remember the yellow paint, the smell of the air inside and outside of the house, the grand view from the porch, the games, the palmetto trees, and the hammock that hung from the back porch.
The bright yellow paint dressed the beach house. Amongst a sea of pale grays and monotonous cream houses, a bright, sunny yellow burst in the middle, like a single, glorious sunflower in a field of white dahlias. The cheery paint was freshly applied every couple of years because the unforgiving salt from the Atlantic Ocean coated the paint and devoured its cheerfulness. The welcoming yellow paint comforted me often when I was upset or going through teen-angst driven tantrums. The paint was so inviting, so uplifting, such a much needed splash of happiness from the darkness of every day life. My mother often told me that the yellow beach house was like Heaven. I remember from Sunday School that my teacher, Mrs. Weatherbee, described Heaven as being laden with streets of gold, and yellow happiness everywhere. I often wondered if Heaven was really comparable to how Mrs. Weatherbee described it. Personally I thought that my yellow beach house was like Heaven in that it was sunny, warm, and golden. Life itself seemed to crawl by, as if time were no concept. Every summer when my family and I returned to the sunflower house, my brother and I would record our height on a side wall, and rejoice if we had grown an inch or two. Like...
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