Ocean City 2025

Ocean City, Maryland has been a long awaited destination. I have waited 46 1/2 years to get there.

I was just 14 years old in the fall of 1978 when my father's late-in-the-year, October vacation took us south to Virginia where we went camping near Williamsburg for a week. I'd been asking for months prior, even as far back as summer, "Can we go to Maryland?" I asked over and over and over again, but it wasn't Ocean City on my mind back then... My wish was to find my childhood friend Joey, the boy I'd met in 3rd grade, the one I'd been writing to for five years. I was a young girl in love with a dream.

Part of our vacation took us to the Manassas Battlefield, the Battle of Bull Run, and one day we took a ride to Washington DC where we visited the National Mall, Lincoln Memorial and Smithsonian Institution. It was on that day that my parents drove to the little town of Clinton, Maryland and found the home of my special friend. He wasn't home but his step dad told us where to find him at a little pizza parlor down the road... 

Back at Joey's house our parents visited over coffee while we played board games in the living room and laughed at the antics of our sisters and his dog. We visited twice (I think) and on one of those visits Joey said he wanted to take me to Ocean City. It was one of his favorite places. I'm honestly not sure if he wanted us to come back another time during that trip, or if he was hoping for a whole new visit when the season began anew, but it was not to be. Mom and Dad felt like they had "worn out their welcome" and we headed home with no plan to return.

Joey and I continued to write letters. A few letters one year and a few the next, until James came into my life and my dreams of one day (possibly) being with Joey again faded away forever. It was an impossibly difficult dream to release. My dreams today are obviously no longer the same, but the hope of one day reaching Ocean City never went away. This was one of two pieces to finally completing the process of bringing closure to my childhood love story.