Orange Beach, Alabama

      One our way to her home in Orange Beach, Lane tells me about her brother and how hard his decisions have been on the family. She sets up the scene of pains and family warfare. I expect to walk in to her house and feel the squeeze of tensions that have been hanging on walls of her life since she was a teenager.


We walk in and her parents’ faces light up. Her mom’s smile comes with a sparkle in her eye and her dad’s laughter rings from his heart as he catches her up on all she has missed since she was last home.

Later we walk across a lawn, pass the house raised on poles, and look toward the water. The inner coastal waterway is a calming sight and it’s hard to believe it connects to a sea of violent possibility. A sailboat is anchored 100 yards off the end of the shore. A man stands in the water on one side of the dock, working on setting a large fishing net. Some people float around on inflatable rafts laughing and talking. Some others sit on the dock. They are responsible for tossing the floaters more cans of beer when needed. A large wagon sits on the dock, full of ice and drinks; there is no need to cross the yard and go back to the house for refills. Lane tells me these are the people she grew up with. These are the people she loves; I want to love them for that reason. I need to love them; I do.

I am romanced by them, by without their knowledge of it. I’m romanced by their individual histories, their unspoken vivacious stories of identity and how they learned to spend their time. I fall in love with the people they grew up with, knowing that many pieces of my friends’ characters, hearts, and minds that I appreciate exist because of the behavior and influences of those unsuspecting contributors.

I can turn it over and over in my mind and it doesn’t lose its beauty. Where my friends come from is a special ingredient to who they are, who they are becoming, and who they will forever be. I treasure these opportunities I get, to take trips to the unique places they come from. It’s through these visits that I am given the gifts of knowing them more intimately, appreciating them more intensely, and I can’t help but to love them more profoundly.