They say you never forget your first love. I suppose that’s why in Santa Barbara yesterday, I thought of Cocoa Beach.

My ninth grade was full of firsts. My first plane ride. My first time in Florida. My first time seeing the ocean. My grandparents had rented a condo on Cocoa Beach. It is fitting that I experienced it with them — they had given me a sea of golden grain before that —and now an ocean of blue. Perhaps they were, and are still, the horizon to my every view. 

Maybe it’s always about the people. I know it is for us. As we travel the country, the world, the memories we make come down to the people we connect with — some for the first time, some again and again. And maybe it’s because I saw my grandfather’s bare feet for the first time — this midwest farmer who fit so perfectly shoed and working in the dirt — was toe-wiggling in the the open sands of Cocoa Beach — and I thought at that moment, we, I, could go anywhere. 

And if I believe it for myself, allow it for myself, I have to do the same for others. We should all be given that opportunity, that privilege, that chance to be open, to be free, to give a little wiggle.