Our place

We spent the day yesterday at the beach...I know... what else is new : )  We love the beach so much. It was a very special for us though. Pretty surreal and emotional. Before we had the little ones Rob and I spent many Sundays at the beach in Bay St. Louis. Our big kids were teenagers by then and not all that interested in hanging out with us so Rob and I did this quite a bit. We always ate at our favorite restaurant that was right on the beach. It's the kind of place that makes you think of Jimmy Buffet.  The doors and windows are always open and the breeze blows right through the place. Lots of great artwork on the walls. Actually right above our favorite table was a picture of Jimmy Buffet fishing with the owners, the Trapanis. The music was always just right. The seafood was always delicious. It was beachy. It was romantic. It was the perfect lunch place on a Sunday and more importantly it was "our" place. During the spring and summers months after lunch we'd go to the beach a few blocks down right across from Our Lady of The Gulf church. We loved when the clock at the church would strike on the hour. It was such a beautiful sound. Many days I lifted my arms in praise with the sun on my face, the wind in my hair and my toes in the sand and thanked the Lord for giving us such beauty. Our favorite spot on the beach. Our favorite restaurant. With my favorite person in the world. I have such great memories of those days.

Then on August 29th of 2005 it was gone. Completely gone. Hurricane Katrina took it away. Two weeks after the storm we made it to Bay St. Louis finally. The roads leading to the city were cleared and we were able to go see what had happened.  We stood right there where our place had been and wept. It looked like there had been an earthquake. There was no building. There was no beach. The roads along the bay were gone. The bridge that spanned the bay was wiped out. I have never seen such devastation before. I felt so selfish that I was crying over "our" place being gone. Knowing that the Trapanis and everyone else in our area had lost their homes and their businesses. But still I couldn't help it. I felt like I had lost a piece of us. It was heartbreaking.

For a long time it was too painful to even go down there. I couldn't do it without crying. Well ever since the girls have been home, every time we would go to the gulf coast we'd drive by this area and we'd tell them about our place. About a year ago (six years later) the infrastructure was finally complete. With the roads back and the beaches filled in the businesses started rebuilding and about a month ago Trapani's Eatery in Bay St. Louis reopened. Yesterday, we took our girls to eat there and walk along the beach.  We got to talk to the owners and tell them how happy we were that they were back and briefly share with them what their place has meant to us. In fact we got to tell them that in our cupboard is a plate that we found that day seven years ago. It was the only thing left from the restaurant. One plate and we brought it home and Rob uses it all the time. They thought that was so sweet that we found a plate in the rubble and that it meant enough to us to keep it and use it to this day. It was truly good for the soul to spend the afternoon in Bay St. Louis and take our girls to Trapanis. It's different than it was before. Some of the things about the new place we like better and some of the things we really miss about the way it used to be. It's still perfect though and it's still "our" place.