Blue Jean Baby

Tank: Island Snow; Shorts: Nordstrom Rack (similar, similar - on sale!) ; Sandals: Shopbop; Wristlet: Coach (similar, similar)

We stayed in a vacation rental with our friends in Hawaii for a week, and like many beach houses in Hawaii, it had a lot of open air elements to it. The master bathroom shower didn't have a door on it, (or walls really). It felt luxurious to shower in the middle of a room, the windows open to let the breeze in. Where the walls met the roof of the master bathroom and bedroom, there were windows that had no glass - just screens. These windows, un-closable, let you hear the wind blowing, the rain falling, and the birds chirping. A block away from the beach, it's never cold enough to need to shut all of the doors and windows, and we spent most of our trip with them flung open, ocean breezes winding through the salty, sandy house.

Perhaps the thing I miss most about growing up in Hawaii are the sounds, the smells, and the feeling of the air. The way you could always listen to a rain squall falling on the roof and smell the fresh drops through the open windows. The way the breeze wound its way through a home. Here in Oregon, our windows are often closed in the winter and it's stuffy and the temperatures are so controlled that they make my skin and eyes dry. In the summer, it's so hot in our apartment and no air blows through, turning the upstairs rooms into veritable saunas. In Hawaii, I never remember being too hot (it did get chilly in the winters at my house), instead I often felt like I was at the absolute perfect temperature. It never really gets above 80 near the ocean - the breeze and the water keeps it permanently bearable, summer or winter.

To be in Hawaii for 10 days was like taking my skin home. It soaked up the moisture, the humidity, the ocean breezes, the sun. My freckles all bloomed, my skin took on a teeny bit of sun, and everything felt as it should be. I wish I could bottle up that air and just take it with me.