I never understood homesickness as a kid or young adult because I loved traveling to my grandparents’, to friends’ houses and with my father on various trips to the country. I did not mind being away from home, perhaps because I moved from one geographic place to another frequently throughout my childhood. So home was never one location for me and thus the concept of missing one particular place, foreign.

I’m in Panama City Beach visiting my parents. Today Dad I went exploring around town, looking for the tackier kitschier parts of PCB, which is actually harder than you might think given today’s high rise condos and corporatized environment of the beach today. However, if you go into Panama City proper, otherwise known as “across the bridge,” the pink flamingos and the kitsch is alive and well.

Alabama holds my roots in its dark red clay and kudzu-lined backroads, in the highways between Mobile and Tuscaloosa where I traveled to see my brother in college and in its kitchens where the women in my family told stories as they shelled peas, deveined shrimp and peeled sweet potatoes.

Growing up along the Gulf Coast, I remember taking drives with my mother and breathing in the salt air. Sand dunes periodically hid the Gulf from view but for the most part, I could see water for miles. Sometimes we would drive to the fish market and pick out the day’s catches for dinner. Other times we drove with no particular location in mind. I understood, on some level, my mother’s need to roll down the windows and feel the wind against her face. I sensed, especially as a teenager, …