Personal Narrative: Long Beach Island

There’s no other place in the world where I feel the most at home than being at Long Beach Island. There you can smell the fresh, salty air of the ocean as the warm breeze brushes across your face. It is a place where the sand, sometimes chilled by the water or boiling hot up in the sand dunes, fiddles its way through your toes one by one sending chills down your spine with every step. Off in the distance you can hear the chiming of bells as the ice cream men call children of all ages to cool themselves off with a frozen treat. This is the place that all summer long, I am lucky to call home.
Not only would my college application be incomplete without Long Beach Island, my life would also be incomplete if Long Beach Island was not in the picture.
It’s a little taste of a different life that I get to live for only two months out of each year. It creates a connection between both of my grandparents, my cousins, my aunts and uncles and my family that you could not grasp anywhere else, and within those two short months the bond between our families strengthen immensely.
All of this could not have been possible without the help of my Grandfather. The reason for all of this is credited to him because he was a man who believed strongly that unity is what ties a family together and from that tie comes that inseparable relationship we all assimilate at Long Beach Island. As a result he incorporated that “bond” between the houses that he bought and built for our families; literally a bridge connects the two houses we live in. How much closer can two families get! One could say that the feeling of being smothered by the same family members day in and day out would veer them away, but because of the distance we suffer through at home in the winter, it’s a sense of refreshment to have them so near each summer.
Long Beach Island offers me a secret identity where the smile on my face is as genuine as it can be. That the feeling of love and comfort is surrounding you wherever you go. The island itself posses a quality of cheerful optimism; sharing with everyone living there the joy of a summers day and the chance to do something great. For my family that was the chance to grow closer and share the memories of Long Beach Island, which we are sure to never forget.