Home, wherever that may be

For the past 11 years, my family has headed coastal North Carolina for a two-week vacation smack dab in the middle of July. To be specific, our destination of choice is Topsail Island (pronounced Top-suhl, not Top-sail), located just south of the outer banks. The island is exquisite: 18 miles of gorgeous sand, waving grass on the dunes, and enormous, dark blue waves, all visited occasionally by packs of dolphins who are adept surfers, to the delight of beachgoers. If you drive all the way south, then park and walk about a quarter mile out to the tip of the island, you'll think you just walked into heaven: the ocean and the clear blue waters of the Intracoastal Waterway merge together just beyond untouched white sand, forming ever-changing tidepools and currents to play in. If you stay out there long enough, you can sit on a totally empty beach and watch one of only a handful of water sunsets on the East Coast as the sun sinks below the mainland on the other side of the Intracoastal Waterway.

Sounds like a relaxing vacation, right? Now factor in the following: my immediate family of six drives--yes, drives--from our home in Massachusetts to get there, leaving on Friday evening and taking turns at the wheel overnight to arrive by breakfasttime. That includes my third-grade brother, who, God bless him, sleeps most of the night and wakes up claiming to have stayed up for the whole drive, plus four other full-grown adults. When we get there, we meet up with my father's five siblings and their families, including nine cousins and their spouses and kids, plus my grandparents. Every year, the gang seems to grow--long-lost second and third cousins, inlaws from other sides of the family, and new babies and significant others pop up all the time to join in the fun. At times, we number close to 50, although nobody will hold still long enough to get a good count. We rent houses in the same area and hit the beach by day, then share blenders full of margaritas and guitar duets on the deck by night.

Not to mention the character of the island. Even though we only spend two weeks there a year, the guy who owns the local fish shop remembers us every single year when we return. So does the owner of the putt-putt golf course, where we frequently stop for ice cream. The rickety old pier plays host to a whole cast of characters if you walk out far enough, and they'll all be happy to become your new best friend if you give them the time. We always make sure to spend a night at the Crab Pot, a sweaty seafood joint downtown featuring kareoke nights that my family invariably takes over with our enormous numbers. By the end of the night, we've extended our circle of friends by at least the 25 other people in the bar.

As we drive over that short bridge, we all feel like we're coming home.

This island is so much a part of my life that sometimes I literally ache for it. My Boston accent and prolific use of "wicked" as an adverb give away my out-of-towner status, but this one of the few places besides my real hometown where I'm truly not a tourist, even if I am even there for only two weeks of the year. It's a place where I've grown up and gained so much of who I am today that it couldn't ever be anything but home.