Where I Live/Where I Love *Challenge*: Seabrook, TX

[Teresa]

Seabrook is rough around the edges, a place never featured in Forbes or Fortune's "Best Places to Live", but it offers colorful sailboat races every April, a kid-ccentric parade each July 4th, and magical Christmas processions of boats draped in colorful lights. It's a water town of 12.5 square miles with a population of 12,000, land purchased in 1895 by Seabrook W. Sydnor and incorporated in 1961, a place to fish, boat, and wear sandals year-round.

I miss my home of twenty-four years, still buck the monotony of Sugar Land's perfectly landscaped city and lawns with not a brick building or patch of designated flora out of place; seven years in "Sweetville" and the place still feels foreign.

I miss the brine and pelicans of Seabrook, the wildflowers that grow how and where they want, the people who grow wild, too.

There's a curve along Seabrook's Todville Road where I used to stop my Jeep at night, an indention where Galveston Bay took a love bite out of the land so its waters could almost kiss the cars forced to slow down. I'd shut off my engine and open the windows to hear the sound of water slapping the jagged rocks, the best place to hear my favorite siren sing.

[Diana E. Backhouse]

Have just discovered this post through a link that Julia sent me.  Lovely description, Teresa. Together with the photo, I had no problem in transporting myself to the spot.

[Deborah Jovan Reed]

I love that last paragraph, a beautiful 6 really doing that challenge justice because I don't travel much but I'd like to see it for my own.

[jkdavies]

thank you Teresa! From over this side of the water, the coast of Texas isn't something I am very aware of, and yet your piece tells me so much about it. I love the birds perched on the piles; and the sense of a place that just is, with no pretensions. "Love bite out of the land" is a fantastic phrase!

[Paul de Denus]

We're situated along the same coast Teresa- your last line-"I'd shut off my engine and open the windows to hear the sound of water slapping the jagged rocks, the best place to hear my favorite siren sing."-I know what you mean-I hear that exact sound on heavy weather nights.

[Mike Handley]

The bay's "love bite" ... excellent. And I'm glad you had 24 years to wild up before you moved to Sweetville.

[Angela]

The last two sentences were especially delightful. No place like home. Your 6 made me want to visit.

[Sandra Davies]

More evidence of sisterhood Teresa - sounds just my sort of place and lovely description