A Childhood Scattered, Smothered, Covered & Threatened By The GULF Oil Spill

Growing up, I wanted my father to listen to me a lot like my friends did. I wanted my mother to listen to me, because there was so much to tell and the pain was coming through. I wanted my boyfriend to listen because life was closing in from everywhere. As graduation approached, there was so little time to show we cared and to say the words that showed in out hearts.

The GULF oil spill has prompted me to reflect. As oil washes ashore and booms are planted behind the houses we grew up in, I reminisce of better times. Times that seemed pure. As a senior in high school, I went to go see "Stealing Home" with my dear friend Shannon (O'Brien) Heller. To this day, it reminds me of HOME.

As Katie waltzed up the pier (we are all so familiar with fishing piers) she exclaimed, "All they did was drag this poor horse up to this platform and they pushed him off into a cold tank of water. Everyone laughed and they clapped. They thought it was funny. I cried. I thought it was mean. Let's go. See, that's all I want to do Billy-Boy. I want to leap of this pier and fly high in the air and hang with the wind and drift through the clouds, and at night, with the moon full and the sea wild, I'd meet my lover high on a cliff and we'd swoop down into the ocean and swim all the way touch the bottom up through the dark water and break the surface. Then we'd fly to Jamaica for Pina Coladas...God, I wish I could do that."

With this tragedy, I wonder where the time went. It is as if it has left us here alone. I am looking in the mirror and instead of the world getting clearer it is getting cloudier. I can't believe it might be over. Those moments seemed like yesterday. My friends and I could not wait to be older...

The oil spill is changing our lives tomorrow. I wish we could go back to high school and live in forever so we can hold on to those moments that we made as we shared our dreams together. Those were the best days of our lives.

Even though we left and went our separate ways we will never fade away.

For my friends along the Gulf that I have shared these wonderful memories with, I am in you and you are in me.

I will always remember those bonfires at the "third parking lot" at Pensacola Beach drinking Strawberry Hill and listening to Hendrix, U2 and REM. AND, I can't forget incessantly breaking curfew. In the words of 80's sensation Dan Hartman, "I can dream about you if I can't hold you tonight."