{"id":762,"date":"2012-10-15T16:25:02","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T21:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.janicebyrd.com\/?p=762"},"modified":"2012-11-15T23:12:40","modified_gmt":"2012-11-16T04:12:40","slug":"the-call-of-the-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/the-call-of-the-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"The Call of the Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nJanice & Her Mother 1957
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

I grew up in Kansas, far, far from the ocean.\u00a0 My mother, however, filled our home with reminders of the seashore\u2014conch shell bookends, seascape murals and the scent of gardenia and plumeria which she wore year-round.\u00a0 Sometimes she would direct our attention to the waving wheat field beyond our back yard and talk about the tides and the cadence of the sea.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m the oldest of five children, two girls and three boys.\u00a0 When our family became too large to \u201ccamp out\u201d in our station wagon, we began alternating vacation times.\u00a0 The girls would go one summer, and the boys the next, always to the beach.\u00a0 The closest ocean was 800 miles away in Galveston, Texas.\u00a0 Occasionally, we would venture elsewhere, to New Orleans, or even to Lake Michigan, where we once took a cruise.<\/p>\n

During the summer of my sixth grade year, we moved to Texas and closer to the coast.\u00a0 Still, it was a long drive to the ocean.\u00a0 The near-by lakes became our most frequented shore as we learned to water ski, snorkel and fish.\u00a0 My memory is replete with mother-daughter talks while both of us tread water, drifted in a metal rowboat or sunned on a sand bar.\u00a0 It was there, atop a towel that I read and reread Anne Morrow Lindbergh\u2019s Gift from the Sea<\/em> a favorite of my mother\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Years later when I was newly married, my Air Force husband and I were stationed in Charleston, S. Carolina.\u00a0\u00a0 I lived only minutes from the seashore, but, oddly, I seldom went.\u00a0 I guess it was enough just knowing the sea was there, nearby.\u00a0 I was young and my days were full with two babies in the house.\u00a0 Besides, the call of the sea still sounded like my mother\u2019s voice.\u00a0 I had yet to hear its siren song for myself.<\/p>\n

My husband and I eventually returned to Texas to raise our family, and our vacations often took us to the beach.\u00a0 Our children loved the new water sports of parasailing, scuba diving and jet skiing.\u00a0 One Christmas, we gave ourselves a family trip to Hawaii.\u00a0 Years later we had access to a beach house in California through my husband\u2019s employer.\u00a0 We went infrequently, but I always kept the house key in my purse as a reminder of my place by the sea.<\/p>\n

Over the last thirty years, I\u2019ve traveled to six continents.\u00a0 I\u2019m often asked, \u201cWhat is your favorite place?\u201d\u00a0 And, I find myself, more often than not, describing a seaside town, an unspoiled beach or a city by a bay.<\/p>\n

I live with mementos of my travels all around me.\u00a0 Photographs paper my walls.\u00a0 Baskets and jars of shells adorn my bathroom.\u00a0 Travel books fill every bookcase in my house.\u00a0 I frequently discover a forgotten seashell in a jacket pocket, and sand from somewhere lines the dresser drawer where I store my swimsuits.\u00a0 Even opening one special linen cabinet can give me pause when I smell coconut oil on a terrycloth beach towel, and remember.<\/p>\n

I feel at home whenever and wherever I smell a salty breeze or hear the movement of water.\u00a0 The taste of crab and the sight of a lighthouse can send me to my comfort zone almost instantaneously.\u00a0 I can experience tranquility whether or not I\u2019m actually gazing at the sea, which most of the time is not possible from my north Texas home.\u00a0 It\u2019s a part of me.<\/p>\n

I hear the call of the sea because I carry its nature with me wherever I go.\u00a0 It\u2019s been said that the difference between a tourist and a traveler is that the latter stops thinking in terms of \u201cback home.\u201d\u00a0 But rather, a traveler takes \u201chome\u201d with her.\u00a0 The call of the sea allows me to journey through life as a traveler.<\/p>\n

Just as my mother shared her nature and traditions with me, I want to pass those rituals on to my children.\u00a0 What better place to do it than in Galveston?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janice & Her Mother 1957 I grew up in Kansas, far, far from the ocean.\u00a0 My mother, however, filled our home with reminders of the seashore\u2014conch shell bookends, seascape murals and the scent of gardenia and plumeria which she wore year-round.\u00a0 Sometimes she would direct our attention to the waving wheat field beyond our back […] Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":802,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions\/802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}