I had just graduated from college when the serial vacations to Myrtle Beach with my brother began. No more tests or homework. No research papers, no oral presentations, no grade pressure. It was 1994.
After sunset my brother and I would wander through Barefoot Landing, a sprawling shopping complex built on a marsh, with shaky bridges that swung with the clomping rhythm of our shoes and lights scattering lollipop colors on the water.
As I strolled past candle shops and glass-front book stores, I felt lighter. No, not just lighter. Unencumbered. I liked the sound of that word and I became obsessed with the idea of air-light locomotion; at the beach I would stash my purse in the trunk before walking anywhere. I stopped carrying anything in my hands; even an umbrella on a cloudy day seemed like a bag of rocks to me. I liked my new self-contained, independent beach feeling, my arms swinging free.
Having my hands empty changed how I related to the things around me. On a whim I could touch or grasp anything I saw, could yield to the moment. I fed the fish and turtles without a thought of where to put my purse. I read parts of books in bookstores, re-shelved them, and walked away.
But weightless travel had drawbacks. I longed for my handbag whenever I got a headache and had no pain relievers with me. I suffered regret when I looked into a mirror to see my hair was a wind-tossed tangled nest and had no comb.
Dragging my fingers through my hair, trying to un-knot the tangles, I could not deny it: The less encumbered I was, the less I was able to do on my own, and the more dependent I was on my surroundings to feed, hydrate me, or cure my headaches.
Still, I liked the feeling; at the time it seemed almost like an epiphany that obsessive preparation was a kind of prison.
But after returning from the beach, the magical feeling of being unencumbered faded; as routine clamped around me, I began to haul around the bulk of my purse again. I stocked it with snacks and OTC pain relievers in case I got a headache and a drink so I could swallow them.
But I returned to the beach a number of times, and every time, the jumble of my past dropped away, and with it my cluttered handbag.
My brother and I would sit on the wooden bench of the pier, lean over the splintered railing, and watch the waves slowly build, roll over, and collapse. Surrounded by vast, clear empty spaces, I could easily imagine a future of endless possibilities.
On each trip to the beach, I remembered the last, as if all the trips were part of a wonderful continuous dream. And with it came a dread of it ending; I was in a lull of transition and I liked it. I did not want to clutter the blank canvas of my future with ungainly decisions.
I thought I could carry my unencumbered beach feeling home with me like a seashell, and it would remind me to avoid doing anything that would weigh me down.
But when I got home this dream always receded; I had just graduated. The future, which had teemed with possibility on the pier, was just a frightening void; I needed direction.
Besides, I wanted to set goals that took longer than a day to accomplish, like getting a job or writing a novel. In a way, committing was freedom in action. Keeping all options open all the time because you never chose any of them was paralysis.
I became practical. My handbag resumed its place by my side. And finally, one day, it stayed.
After the final summer of meandering beach trips ended, the years tumbled over each other in a glass-green blur of motion. The beach trips, it turned out, had strained credit limits and the vacations slowed, finally stopped, and pulled away.
I got married. I bought a house.
Clutter multiplied in my cabinets. My handbag sank with new weight. Medical annoyances built up, slowly, over time. In addition to pain relievers, rolls of antacids joined the clutter inside; my purse became a jumbled pharmacy.
In a way, I reasoned, stuffgranted freedom. Antacids, I reasoned, gave me the freedom not to have heartburn. My phone gave me the freedom to call people or search the internet. Tylenol liberated me from headaches.
Meanwhile, I became settled. I planted a weeping willow tree. I watered it and watched it grow, year by year, outside my window. As its roots dug in, mine did, too. I thought I would never leave and that anything I wanted to do could be accomplished where I was.
It was peaceful out in the country where I lived, and quiet. I felt as though all of the dramas of my life were far away, having receded safely into the past. And I thought that was okay.
In fact, the longer I stayed, the more I dreaded the idea of ever moving, imagining unbearable attacks of homesickness if I ever lost the house.
I lived in the house for over a decade, content, before everything fell apart. Financial disaster struck in the form of a layoff and threw my settled life into chaos. A dismal local job market prompted the question: Would I be willing to move to another state?
I wanted to say no. I had looked at the house every day for a number of years; the walls appeared solid and immovable. I liked the predictable way the bars of sunlight from its many windows striped the sofa and carpet. The house seemed as reliable as anything in my life.
But the situation was dire. And I remembered something buried by years, a hazy dream of myself at the beach, wandering Barefoot Landing wearing loose lightweight shirts and gazing at the lights shining down on the water.
I unloaded the cabinets bulging from accumulated clutter and gave away most of it. I gave the house a final glance and knew I had stopped seeing it, the way you stop seeing anything you look at every day. But I saw it clearly, as I said goodbye.
As I did I remembered that life, like ocean waves, was something moving, not static, a place to travel light.
My husband and I moved into an apartment in Florida where a better job awaited. I swam, explored parks, and got a tan; small lizards scurried in front of me on my way to the pool, and I saw ducks gliding through the green shining lake behind the apartment.
I visited NASA, swam in the Gulf, and saw hulking elephant-skinned manatees. I gained weight from eating at all the new restaurants.
But sometimes I still thought hazily of the house I had left behind with the willow tree and the sunlit rooms and the silence. Again I wondered as I had many times: Is Florida home?
No, not like the one I remember. The home I had left behind was a place fixed in space and time that I thought I needed to be happy. Here, I was content, yet I felt as if I could move anywhere, at any moment, and still find things to love about where I was.
I thought maybe that was what it like, to be unencumbered: to enter and embrace the ebb and flow of attachment and change, and accept them both as parts of a single, constant rhythm.
Florida was not home, not the way my old house in SC had been, but I liked it. And there were plenty of beaches there, with stretches of sandy shore to sink my feet into.
And now, when I go to a Florida beach, I sometimes like to stash my purse into the trunk of the car and pretend, for a moment, that air is all I need to live.
But this is a fantasy. With each year my purse gets fuller; it bulges more and more as I discover new things I want or need to have with me. But there has been a progression. I have given up handbags and clutches.
The straps have gotten longer; and now, when I go out, the reassuring bulk of my belongings presses against the crest of my hip and the long strap cuts into my shoulder as I wade deep into a rolling sea of moments, lulled by the ever-constant cadence but ready to be splashed, with nothing left behind, and nothing in my hands.