I’m captivated by my hands.

They’re tanned, all the way to the nail bed, with the in-between spaces a sparkling white, unbastardized by the rays that touched every other part of my body the past five days.

And I’ve come to a conclusion:

I. MUST. LIVE. BY. THE. OCEAN.

And soon.

Growing up in Cleveland, I spent a lot of time at the beach. And by beach, I mean Huntington Beach, the not-so-vast strip of separating Lake Erie from the neighboring town of Rocky River. I could ride my bike there, and did on occasion, when the whir of the backyard sprinkler seemed too suburban for my waterloving self. At night in the summer, when we finally reached the magical age where the state decided that we were competent enough to operate $50,000 vehicles loaned or purchased for us by our ostentatious parents (note that I am excluding myself from this group, unless someone can make a case that a 1985 gold Plymouth Caravelle was in any way, shape or form ostentatious), we would drive up and down Lake Road, parking to mingle with others our age as we walked along the pier or on the warm, damp grass lining the beach. It was a mishmash of hoodlums, brainiacs, druggies, populars, and somehow the cement parking lot just a few short yards from the lapping water nullified and equalized the high school caste system, making us just a group of kids enjoying the warm breeze and adolescent conversation. Youth at its best.

And now, years later, I find myself returning to the water, listening to its beckoning call, willing me to live there. I love the feeling of sand in my toes, of the exhilaration when a wave knocks the breath out of you, of salt water making your hair a crunchy mess. I love looking for Periwinkles as the tide nips our toes, of walking with friends drinking a Corona as the sun starts to set behind the cirrus clouds, of laid-back clothing, attitudes, demeanors that only a beach town can bring.

And I say it again:

I. MUST. LIVE. BY. THE. OCEAN.

The weekend was everything I wanted and even more than I needed. Cell phones were turned off, messages ignored, internet remained unchecked. Mornings were spent riding bikes past sprawling beach mansions and running up the dunes, afternoons included outside showers and with the evenings came my first (yes, I couldn’t believe it either) time skinny-dipping.

I want to experience this every day. I want the sunlight through the plantation blinds to awaken me with blue sky. I want my afternoons on a hammock spend lackadaisically eating strawberries and reading House & Garden. I want to hear the waves lapping the beach at high tide, the call of the gulls, the chirp of the crickets. I want to see the stars, undiluted by artificial lighting, to watch the fireworks in the distance as we skip and leap with sparklers in hand, to witness the sandpiper unsteadily ambling down the beach in search of its next meal. I want to write in this surrounding, to settle down here, to give my children this life.

This feeling, this experience, is what I want for now, for days – and years – to come.

Somehow, someway, I need to live this life.