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It would not be the same, but it would be familiar.

A few weeks ago we decided to squeeze in a quick holiday between our return from America and the boys’ return to school. One of The Kid’s friends was spending January at her family’s house on the Gold Coast and invited us to visit, so we used that as a jumping-off point to organise an entire vacation. A three-day one, at least.

Our expectations were nonexistent, considering The Husband booked the hotel and flights from his phone in an Atlantan Marriott Courtyard a couple of weeks before we left, but as we drove through the lights of the city and arrived at our hotel just before bedtime, TH and I looked at each other and came to the realisation: we liked this place.

We continued to like it when we awoke the next morning to blue skies and bright sun. We continued to like it as we built sandcastles on the beach and ordered drinks by the pool; as we went to a BBQ at TK’s friend’s place; as we returned for sunset on the beach. Well, I did. TH took the boys to the pool for an end-of-day swim and I headed down to the water solo.

The pounding surf and whipping wind greeted me. I felt like I was returning to a place I already knew, where the world Gold replaced Gulf, where the current was stronger and the waves rougher and the buildings down the road were taller, but that felt familiar nonetheless. I felt the way I always feel at a beach: at home.

Something within me is set aright when I’m surrounded by the vastness of the ocean: I’m reminded that I’m not as in control as I like to pretend I am, that there is a story grander than the one I could tell, that the world is dangerous but something bigger is keeping me safe within it. Because the ocean, it is brutal, and filled with all the danger one could imagine (hello, Titanic remains), but when I stand on the sand before it, just out of its reach, I can remain in protected awe.

I think I may believe in God because of the ocean. At any rate, its existence fosters within me a sense of recognition: I have been here before. I know this place. Even when I haven’t, and I don’t. Which makes me believe there is a connectedness, and a source for it, beyond what I can see.

And there’s this: after I texted TH to come down with the boys and see this beauty–because for all love does to curtail freedom, it is also an end to loneliness, to living without witnesses–I turned and saw a boy wrapped in a white hotel towel appear at the crest of the hill leading to the beach. He ambled toward me, and I recognised him. As my own. As my home. And he told me the same: “I saw a woman on the beach and it was you, so I ran.” And so we remained in awe, together.

Finding home, I think, demands this recognition. And to find this recognition, we must pay attention, be attuned, so as not to miss the echoes of home: Little Brother’s hesitation on the sand that echoes that of my sister’s when she was younger and called it stinky before coming to love it, as he has (sort of). The map on our bedroom wall that TK hung the other day, created by the illustrator of our book cover, that details how he and I found each other. Finishing the first Harry Potter with the boys at bedtime and being reminded of all the best parts I’d forgotten.

These stories, these beaches, these echoes, these recognitions, all like stones leading our way home.