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Where the road meets the beach


I could never describe the feeling of being there, even to myself. I can close my eyes and see everything in the most vivid of colours, hear the sounds of the sea, smell the fresh fish and wet sand, maybe even reach out and touch the trunk of a coconut tree as if it were right next to me. But then I open my eyes and it all goes away.

I must have said it a million times I know, but whenever I think of home I think of Speyside. Whenever I get that horrible sinking feeling like I am choking, it always goes away when I imagine myself standing on the spot where the road meets the beach, staring out over the lazily crashing waves onto Little Tobago. The happiest of times, the calmest of times, the time when everything finally made sense to me, was in that single moment.

I can crawl deep into the spaces of my memory and drag out scenes from my childhood, when we would take family vacations and my sister and I would kick and scream every time my dad said we had to leave the pool and join them in journeying to Plymoth and Charlotteville for the day. We would cry and stamp and refuse to even look out the window until we got bribed with chock ice. I remember vaguely looking up as he pointed out Little Tobago, driving past the very spot I stood 17 years later. I remember walking across the unmarked grave of the woman in Plymoth, reading the inscription and thinking "eh?"

I remember drives to Charlotteville to get gas, the hot sun stinging down on my back and sighing heavily in the hopes they would realise we just wanted to do a flip back into the pool. They were memories that came back with blunt force and recharged themselves with vigor and I could only smile.

Now these memories are mixed with new ones. Of waking up next to the love of my life, listening to the waves lapping against the shore. Of driving to Charlotteville and taking pictures on the beach and having a dinner of the best fried chicken and chips and pepper sauce I ever tasted. Of taking him up to Plymoth and calming explaining the story of the unmarked grave to him, while he looked like me with a face of "eh?"

Of taking the glass bottom boat to Little Tobago, turning green ( that didn't change! ) and then hiking the unexpected 4 million steps to the top only to see the most amazing house of broken down wood and view of Tobago.

It will be a feeling I will never be able to describe fully. The one that comes to you only in glints, with a sudden gigantic thump of your heart, when you can't quite explain why you are happy.

This is where I go in my mind now, when I miss home, when I miss my dad, when I miss my husband, this is where I go, to the place where the road meets the beach and the wind takes my hair up and my eyes see nothing but an island in the distance. Home.

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