My eyelids were heavy, and unable to stay up, like sheets on your bed in the summer. But my heart was doing double dutch in my chest and my mind was churning like an upset stomach. Almost there, almost! My parents chanted. Looking out the window into the dark, watching the silhouettes of houses fly by was like watching a mobile as a baby; it made me very sleepy.

Pulling up to a tall building with a lot of windows, I became more alert. I whipped open my door as soon as the car engine was off and I barely heard my Mom tell me to wait, and watch for cars in the lot. I turned and saw my grandparents and my aunt striding toward me. My sisters and I jumped toward them squealing. Follow me, says my aunt. Forgetting my parents, and the car acting as a U-Haul with all our suitcases, my sisters and I follow her shadowy figure through the crisp smelling air, that made our noses tingle and our lungs want to drink in the breeze.

My aunt whispered to us to take off our sandals, and we did. When I took my next step, my toes caught sand between them, and my foot sunk. I heard a splashing, like thunder under water. I couldn't see a thing, but I knew where she had led us...she had taken me to the beach.

I skipped ahead, not fearing if I was to run into something. Suddenly my feet slapped against firmer sand, and with the next step icy fresh waves were upon me, washing over my ankles. I shrieked jumping back to where I thought the shore line was, only to change my mind and run back into the waves as if I was being pulled by a magnet.

I was overwhelmed with the sand, and the waves and the sound. I pictured it to be like a background on a computer, crystal blue water with the sun glistening in the sky. I had no idea of the days to come, but I knew I was going to be spending the whole time in that very spot. I didn't know that my cousin and I would run on the beach, our feet skimming the tip of waves, and I didn't know that she and I would be pulled out too far in the ocean and I would have to swim back against the waves leaving my cousin behind to be saved. I didn’t know that we would travel into town and spend time in an ice cream parlor where my dad served us from behind the glass and rainbow cream bowls.

All I knew at this time was that it was night, and I was prancing about in the waves of the ocean for the first time. My aunt led my sisters and me to our condo where our parents had already brought our bags up to. I walked to the sheets and the pillows spread neatly out on the bed. As I collapsed on the bed, my exhaustion caught up with me and I fell asleep looking at the blurry red numbers on the clock, and woke up with dry grains of sand between my toes.