The beginning of spring and the end of summer in Washington always manage to remind me of my childhood in Florida. Something about the lighting, the pattern of sun and rain, some indescribable feeling of the months of May and August always seem to make me nostalgic for the backdrop of the first eight years of my life. Most of the time you’ll hear me say that the only thing I miss about Florida is the thunderstorms. But that’s not true. I miss the road trips. I miss the lazy heat-bathed days. I miss pre-hurricane season when I would prepare my closet to be a hurricane shelter and invariably make my mom mad months later when I had forgotten about it and cockroaches began to swarm.

But, as I get older and gain more responsibility, I have to wonder if it is Florida I miss, or just childhood, the innocence of it all. I remember clearly sitting on my dad’s lap one day when I was four or five with my arms wrapped happily around his neck, proclaiming that I wanted to marry him when I grew up. I remember clearly stomping through the playground at my elementary school wearing light up sneakers. I remember clearly playing games with my grandparents once a week when my mom worked. I remember clearly wandering the halls of Orlando’s first alliance church during Awana. I remember clearly the time one of our two new goldfishes ate the other one. I remember clearly when mom, dad and I got back from shopping for my not-yet-born sister and found snake skins. I remember clearly asking my dad if I could go driving with him and help him shift in his cerulean blue car. I remember clearly my family’s road trip to Tennessee and seeing fire flies for the first and only time in my life.

I remember the days when family was most always fun and without drama. It was, I realize now, never that way at all, but when you’re a kid, nobody’s drama really matters all that much (aside from your own, of course). But all those most cherished memories from my childhood are tied inextricably to Florida. In a weird way, I think I will always consider Florida home as much as I will consider Washington. Washington might be where I came into being who I am, where I have all my friends and where I have spent the majority of my life, but Florida is my birthplace, where my family is, where my first and most precious memories are.

Bluegrass and southern rock music and the like (Mofro, John Mellencamp, Stevie Ray Vaughn) are all musicians that will always remind me of home, and more specifically, of my father. Listening to these, I can’t help but be transported back to the various road trips we went on when I was a child and these artists and others were the primary soundtrack to our trip. I can’t help but remember the roasted peanuts my dad would always search out, the Florida pine trees, the hot sun. Even still, I have the stretch of road from Orlando to Jacksonville memorized.

I think I am coming to realize that who I was in Florida and the memories I have there, innocent and rose-colored as they may be, are just as important and integral to who I am as everything I have learned and experienced in Washington. Your roots are important, and I’ve come to understand that my roots truly are in Florida. While this might not be true for my sisters, it is certainly the case with me.

Hey, and if you still need any proof, I still instinctively think the ocean is east. ;)