Happy Place?

I’ve been crushed into a small, closed in and painfully dark place. It’s scary and isolated. I’ve sat in many rooms with boring furniture, no real art, bland walls and a person with a clipboard. “Go to your ‘happy place,’” as if it were as natural as blinking. Is there such a thing? It feels as though I’m a cave dweller in Plato’s cave. All I can see is shadows dancing on the wall, no clear-cut images of people, friends, joy.

This is illusive “happy place” seems so distance and fabricated to my tiny black home, but occasionally I can still feel the warm wind rushing through my hair, my toes sinking into the sand as the smell of salt water invades my thoughts. The water is a colour I could never hope to create with my paints or fully capture in a photo. Under whitewashed roofs and pastel coloured buildings are where I am free, clear and happy. The best time of year is when the long-tail birds are nesting, flying back and forth in a beautiful dance.

My siblings and I spent hours lying down, getting sand all over us while pointing them out to one another, wondering about their nest and how it’s going, or trying to keep up with them running along the beach and up past the houses till the big brass dinner bell summons us back. Faith was too little so Ben and I would take turns hauling her onto our backs before venturing into the clear blue. There are no small, dark places here. Trinity laughed and pointed to a small clump of feathers, feverishly flapping its wings till its mama came to the rescue. It’s all so lucid and vibrant.

The dinner bell would ring and we’d all rush out of the water, leaving our new found friend to his meal, too. After supper my brother and I would “borrow” the shinny blue mopeds from the parking lot. Zipping as fast as we could before we felt the speed wobbles; we would go on treacherous journeys from the tennis court to the furthest lying cottage. We would slay dragons and rescue our sisters from bad men and be spies hiding from the CIA Parents.

Then it begins to fade, the sky turns majestic pink and royal purples and blues, leaving me in awe. Then its dark, I’ve played the day away and my box calls me back to reality.