Last week I went to Hilton Head, SC with a friend of mine from Pittsburgh and her mother. They were kind enough to invite me earlier this summer, and I’ve been looking forward to this trip ever since then.

When I was a little girl, my parents would take us to a condo on Fripp Island, one of the barrier islands not far from Beaufort and Hilton Head. We would go every summer for two weeks with my cousins, and it was always the most fun time of the year. Sure, the kids fought the entire time, and sure, Drew and I had to sleep on a cot for one of the weeks and share our Nintendo games, but all in all it was the most peaceful vacation we had all year.

One of my favorite memories from that time is riding my bike around the island and seeing the Spanish moss hang from huge old trees. Fripp has all kinds of trails that you can walk or bike, and we always did. There are countless pictures of my cousins and me playing on the beach, covered in sand, eating PB&J sandwiches and holding buckets full of sand, water and some kind of sea creature. (Usually a crab, a snail, or a sanddollar.) I can remember as clear as day swimming out in the ocean with my mother, walking on the sandbar during low tide and picking up sanddollars that had washed up and dried out. And then we’d go inside, take baths and put our shells and sanddollars out to air on the porch. The Beach Boys would be on the old tape player above the VCR, my mom and my aunt would be in the kitchen cooking, and we’d be in our pajamas waiting for supper to be ready.

Last Saturday, when I was driving home from my wonderful trip to Hilton Head, I got stuck in traffic. I was sitting at a light, looking around, and suddenly The Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” came on the radio. And I looked down into the marsh, and up at the moss in the trees, and at the signs for Beaufort and the barrier islands, and I started to cry.

If only I could tell that little 9 year-old girl to savor her family vacations. I wish I could tell her that before she knows it, 20 years will have passed and she won’t have time for those kinds of vacations anymore. I wish she would know that no other beach on earth will hold the same kind of power over her memory as that beach in South Carolina. That wet, hard-packed sand, full of fiddler crabs and sanddollars and starfish, will wash away from the coast. And lots of people with lots of money will come along and build giant houses so big that they will obstruct her view of the ocean. And even though she and her brother and her cousins spent practically their entire summers together for all those years, I wish I could tell her that they will grow apart and become acquaintances instead of friends.

So there I was, listening to The Beach Boys and then The Commodores, and I was crying like a pansy in my Volvo station wagon. I had two t-shirts from the Piggly Wiggly in a plastic grocery bag next to me, and a cooler full of food in the backseat. And I do love a good road trip, but I love a good memory even better. And for that moment in time, I could taste a shrimp burger from the Shrimp Shack, I could smell the salt water in the tidals pools on the beach, feel the stone pathway from the condo to the beach under my feet, and I could remember the sounds of “Wheel of Fortune” on Nintendo.

That moment alone made it the best vacation of the summer. So thanks, Boscarinos, for inviting me. Not only was it wonderful to see you and spend time with one of my favorite friends, it was magical to remember my childhood and relive my summers all over again. Let’s do it again soon.