Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops

When life gets you so boxed in that you can't see past the next homework packet, carpool or church assignment, it's nice to have a place in your mind where the sky is blue, the air is balmy and the golden flowers reach fearlessly toward the sun.  It's a place you know so well that you don't even have to be there to smell the salty air or feel the ocean breeze on your arms.  Your feet can anticipate the shock of the Pacific water rushing ever them, your hands remember the gritty feel of the sand.

Even when you're not there, you can close your eyes and know that there is a place where you don't need shoes, you don't need a plan.  Just knowing it's there is soothing, like knowing there's chocolate in the pantry.  You see in your mind's eye that the endless, calming horizon can absorb the roiling turbulence of your mind just as easily as it absorbs the thrashing of the ocean, smoothing it all out and making it serene as the setting sun sinks like an anchor, dragging with it all your silly worries. 

Like Ruby said of Imperial Beach, "Heaven had better be good if it's going to beat this."