My husband and I went to the New Jersey Shore on Tuesday and stayed one night with our daughter and son-in-law and three grandchildren. Despite the gray and misty weather we had a wonderful time, even went crabbing standing on a pier in chilly thirty mile per hour winds. I don't know what it is about the ocean. I have been mesmerized by it since I first went to the shore with my parents and grandparents when I was around age four. It has a strange hold over me and if I don't get there at least once in a summer I feel like something is missing from my life. It doesn't matter if its sunny, rainy, or windy, I could sit, walk, whatever on the beach and watch and listen to the ocean for hours on end. My husband and I spent our February honeymoon at the shore and I even walked on the beach in the snow. It probably sounds very corny, but I feel as if I've come home, like I'm where I belong when I'm by the ocean. It hits me as we cross the bridge from the mainland to the island and I can smell the bay. The sound of the waves crashing ont he shore at night when all is still, the bell buoys in the bay, the boat horns early in the morning when the fishermen set out for the day. And of course the ever present sea gulls. All sounds that take me home to another place and time. Maybe I was a fisherman's wife in Old New England. Who knows? Its just my favorite place to be