To the beach! To the beach!

We're heading to the beach today, and my heart lifts at the thought.

You see, it's hot where I live. Pretty much six months of hot, we get (that's the Yoda influence). And right now it's blazingly hot. Hellishly (although nowhere nearly as horrendously as, well, aitch-e-double-toothpicks) hot. At 6:30 in the a.m., it's already well on the way to the 115 or so degrees predicted as a high. It's been day after day after day of that kind of external oppression that transforms one's car into an oven, the steering wheel just waiting to singe away fingerprints. Turn on the shower and you don't need the "H" part. "C" is tepid enough.

We live in a place where even plunging into the swimming pool isn't refreshing this time of year, potted plants shrivel and a mid-afternoon walk is at your own risk. And you can never get enough water. Or iced tea. With lemon. Over a full glass of Sonic ice.

So to the beach we go, where adventure awaits the day before our girl flies away for her junior year in college.

Sitting underneath the ceiling fan above our dining room table, I can close my eyes and already feel the breeze, the sun burning through 50-proof sunscreen, my toes sinking into damp sand, gripping as the surf tries to drag them outward.

The ocean is my healing place. That enormous ebbing and flowing body of water, a living, breathing organism, if you will, that soothes the soul. It teems with life, above and below. Pelicans are my favorite, skimming the surface in military formation and, spotting something delectable, putting on the brakes and plunging toward breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. Or a mid-afternoon snack.

Stand with your back to the beach and the surf that entices you to step deeper and deeper erases the chatter of thousands of people behind you.

Yes, I love the beach, because it frames that big, beautiful, blue ocean, the enormity of it an affirmation of a Love that is deeper and wider and more vast than any other.