The sands of time.

"You can't go home again," claimed the writer Thomas Wolfe. Yes, I have repeated and relearned that poignant lesson many times in my life. But the seduction of happy memories continues to lure me to revisit the happy places of my childhood to try for just a moment to recapture a glimpse or a feeling from those times past.

Recently, I took a trip back in time to revisit the happy days and places of my childhood. A friend and I drove along the Gulf Coast beaches of Gulfport, Biloxi, Pascagoula, and Mobile on our way to Miami Beach. For her, it was a first-time visit to this area; for me, a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

As a child, each year my family made a summer pilgrimage to visit my grandmother in Mobile and other family members spread from Gulfport to Pensacola. Those were happy, carefree days of sun-browned skin and sun-bleached hair, spent on the beach, dashing in and out of the warm, welcoming waves, playing and running in the sand, and watching the foamy surf swallow our footprints. We built magnificent structures of sand and dreamed marvelous dreams of faraway places separated from us only by the wide, warm waters of the Gulf.

Nights were spent chasing and catching fireflies to make flashing lanterns for our games of night tag with cousins and summer neighborhood friends. We went to bed tired, happy, bronzed children of the sun, lullabied to sleep by the staccato buzz of the cicadas and hum of hungry mosquitoes. In our childhood innocence, we believed those dazzling days of summer sun and star-filled nights of gentle dreams would never end.

Somewhere along life's path, I grew up and moved away from the South. But the soul of the South has stayed with me, burned in my heart and into my memories like a brand that claims me forever as one of its own, subtly influencing my life, loves, and work. For the South is where my values, tastes, and preferences are rooted, from red beans and rice to religion.

Although I had been forewarned that much had changed in the South in the name of progress since my last visit, I was unprepared for the emotions my visit brought to the surface. My first sight of the beautiful Gulf beach brought back wonderful memories of golden sun, white sand, collecting shells, and learning to swim. The tears in my eyes and the lump in my throat were bittersweet: bitter at the sight of the garish man-made structures that had invaded many of the beaches and intruded on my memories; sweet at the flood of happy childhood memories. Voices from the past whispered in my ears, their smooth, soothing drawl carried on the warm Gulf winds.

I chose not to record this visit with photos. Looking at them in the future would surely intrude on those treasured memories of the past. Instead, I captured some memories of the heart in a cup of sand and a handful of small shells. I placed the sand in an hourglass and surrounded it with the shells as a gift to my dad, the Southern gentleman who made sure his children experienced, shared, and understood the heritage of his beloved South. Now in a nursing home, his wonderful drawl has been silenced by a stroke.

Maybe those grains of sand and the shells will also take his memories back to those idyllic days in the sun. I saved a little sand and a few shells for myself. The unchanging sand and shells will be my souvenirs of the trip and the unchanged happy memories of the past and of the heart.