Nostalgia: A Long Walk to Where I Come From

It’s noon, and I’m walking up the hill with a lazy kind of purpose—the bakery first, and then ice cream for my son. The sun is sharp today. It burns the back of my neck, settles deep into my tan arms, and I remember how easy it used to be to get sun-kissed. How the warmth used to settle into me like something known and promised.

The scent rises—fresh-cut grass crisped in the midday blaze, a backyard fire smoldering somewhere nearby. It’s a familiar scent, warm and edged with mystery. Like something ancient I’ve always known and something new I only just discovered. Was it Guatemala? Or Hoi An? The scent could be a beach bonfire in the Dominican Republic. Or maybe it’s just our old backyard—the one we don’t have anymore.

The smell is of years lived by the sea. And though I wasn’t born there, I’ve always felt I belonged to it. The salt. The cold embrace of the water. The sting of sun on skin and the itch of salt drying in the folds of youth. We had an apartment—just a modest place in a small Croatian coastal village—but we had it every summer. Three months of sun and sea and breathless heat. We were the lucky ones. My parents would excuse me a week before school ended so we could slip away early, ahead of the tourists, before the real heat came.

And I remember those summers as if they still live inside my skin. Days that stretched and shimmered. Lazy and loud. Giggles and screams bouncing off stone piers. We jumped into the sea, my girls and I. I knew every rock on the nearest island, named them, touched them like they were part of me—my blood, my bone. As if I knew I would one day leave and might never come back. So I memorized it. Imprinted it. Loved it fiercely.

I was always that kind of girl. Wild on my own, comfortable in solitude, sovereign of every small corner of our seaside kingdom. Even now, I can recite the winds—Yugo, Bura, Maestral—like whispered spells. I don’t remember them all, but I remember how they felt. I remember how the locals would talk, and how I’d collect their words like stones in my pocket. Words that weren’t mine, yet belonged to me. Still do.

I grab my towel now, toss it over my shoulder. Slip into a swimsuit. Catch a glance in the mirror and giggle at the sight—a girl turned woman, skin sun-browned, smile still wide. I take the stairs two at a time, chasing the sun like always, heading to the pier—my pier. My girls are there in memory, our arms all lined up, comparing who’s the darkest, the most kissed by summer. Just a few more days, we’d say, and we’ll be golden gods.

Years of summer—endless, repeating, aching with joy.

And now I’m 41. Still walking. Still following the sun. Something small and invisible moves in the breeze around me—some familiar medicine I cannot name. It smells like everything I’ve ever known.

I was the privileged one then. I still am. Walking through seasons as if they belong to me. As if I belong to them. My feet are bare. My skin is dark. And I walk lightly, like I’ve walked this same path forever. The rocks remember me. The sea remembers. I remember.

Someone named those stones. Someone once named me. Claimed me. Carved me out of summer and salt.

And here I am—under the sun, beside the pool, eyes closed, listening to the crickets sing their old song. I know I am exactly where I’ve always been. Where I came from. Where I belong.

Once, before, now, and always.