I expected the devastation. 

I knew that was the result of a category 4 hurricane and 12 to 18 foot storm surge. 

Weather.com footage of Hurricane Ian’s storm surge

What I didn’t expect was the emptiness. 

Every time I come over the Matanzas Pass bridge, driving or walking, the view over the top of Times Square draws me out to the beautiful stillness of the Gulf of Mexico. The sight brings a smile from deep inside me. 

I’m always amazed at how much I love that view because I’ve seen it so many times. But this time, before we even started up the bridge, the sight of shrimp boats and docks piled up near the corner of the street completely disoriented me. The absurdity of seeing things that should be in the water on the street was total chaos. 

My mind couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. I know these docks. I know these boats. Shrimp boats have been the backdrop to every memory I have of Fort Myers Beach. 

Science suggests that our first memories are from two to two and a half years old. In a recent article published in the journal Memory, Dr. Carla Peterson argues that the memories people can recall of things before the age of four are actually even earlier than they date them. So, when someone recalls a memory they think happened at age three, parents date that memory earlier in their child’s life. Dr. Peterson calls this telescoping.

“When you look at things that happened long ago, it’s like looking through a lens. The more remote a memory is, the telescoping effect makes you see it as closer. It turns out they move their earliest memory forward a year to about three and a half years of age. But we found that when the child or adult is remembering events from age four and up, this doesn’t happen.”

So, memories after the age of four are more concrete and accurately dated.

I absolutely know my first memories in life—I was four years old. I don’t remember my first words or the first book I read. But I know my first memories. They were of shrimp boats, docks, fiddler crabs, and sand spurs—all of those on the same day my parents moved us to the beach. 

The beach—then—was nothing like it has become in the last 10 or 15 years. Back then, there was more space between the houses to see the water as you drove down Estero Blvd. Instead of fancy mailboxes shaped like dolphins, there were palm trees, tropical shrubs, and white, dusty sand, all of it creeping onto the blacktop to make the road feel more like a jungle path than a street. Over the years, I’ve learned to still see these old, precious images despite the multi-million dollar homes that began to fill in the gulf side of the road with their driveways packed with Range Rovers and Audis even though their accumulation robbed you of the slightest glimpse of that beautiful water that you see from the top of the bridge. 

This change to my beach never bothered me because my mind is full of memories of walking that road before there were sidewalks, dodging palm fronds while the lava-hot sand slipped into my Jellie sandals. 

But at that moment, returning after the storm, it felt like I’d never been to this place. We parked in the first open area near Times Square and walked out to the beach. The hurricane was over but stepping from the car, I could feel the long-gone atmospheric pressure push all the air from my lungs. My breath was gone, and so was my beach.

The emptiness was completely overwhelming as I stood on the sand, trying to focus on a pier that was no longer there. We stood exactly where we were one year ago, but my mind couldn’t make sense of what it wasn’t seeing. 

We walked off the beach and onto the pedestrian promenade that should have been bustling with tourists and locals. I looked around, and I couldn’t recognize anything.

I stood in the street outside of what should have been Plaka, home of the best breakfast on the beach, the same place we sat sweating in the shade eating last year. I turned to look down Estero Blvd at nothing.

I saw nothing because there was nothing. I tried to coach myself into seeing something— but there was nothing. This spot that always sparked a stream of memories could no longer shift me from the now to the then. I closed my eyes and forced the storm weight off my chest and drew air back into my lungs so my mind could focus, employing every meditation skill I could. Slowly, the back of my eyelids became the dark holes of a red plastic Viewmaster. My mind began to click through fuzzy, sienna-toned images. Floats in the annual shrimp parade. Girl Scout cookie tables at Winn Dixie. Late night, steamy summer walks to Andretti’s Pizza. The cold gush of air-conditioned air at 7-Eleven. My name in the sidewalk at Beach Elementary. My dad, with his white t-shirt and jet black hair hunched over a blue and white upturned boat, a lit cigarette between his lips and the stinging smell of fiberglass and resin in the air. Popsicle stick crosses from bible school at Chapel by the Sea. Bicycles with plastic streamers on the handles and salt air-rusted spokes. Star Wars at the theater in Santini Plaza. My mom, with bug, Hollywood-style rollers in her hair sitting behind the wheel of a faded tan Oldsmobile. The same Oldsmobile with steam gushing from the hood overheating in tourist traffic. Me in my terry cloth shorts and ribbed tank top, overheating in the back seat.  

When I opened my eyes, it was a rush of nothing. Emptiness. Once again, the sight of nothing overwhelmed me. I felt completely lost in a place I had known my whole life. 

No Dairy Queen. No Cottage. No 7-Eleven. 

This emptiness was all the missing landmarks that guide me through years of memories leading back to a childhood spent on this seven-mile stretch of sand, shells, shrimp boats, and sand spurs. The place that built me.

How will I ever find my way back there in all this emptiness? 

**Many of these photos were taken by Jason. But, I also copied some of these from Google maps. Thanks to those unfamiliar people (Janey White, Scott, Robert Mentecki, Ed Schmuhl, Andrea Pogue, Mr. Ed, Will Hayden) who posted these photos.