Nothing, Everything, Everytime has its Place (Part1)

   My worn thin blue jeans were rolled up to my thighs, hiding the holes in them, that would have otherwise exposed my preteen knees.  My legs were caked with both wet and dry sand from an 8 hour day spent building a masterpiece.  A dozen kids my junior looked on in awestruck wonder at the size of the castle I built on this small Minnesota lake beach.

   The sun began to hide itself behind the pine tree horizon to the west.  The air became just a few degrees cooler, releasing the stench of a dead fish decomposing in the slough just a hop, skip and jump away. None of us were concerned with that now, we were marvelling at my days work with thoughts of the campfire about to be built next.

   I waded into the cool lake up to my knees and turned around. I looked at this castle through sunburned eyes… and then at the kids surrounding it.  An 8-year-old freckle faced boy asked, “Is it done?”

   “Yes, It’s done,” I said. I knew this was a good one.  My personal best… the biggest… the most detail… I didn’t just build a sandcastle, I built a city. “What are you going to do now? Take a picture?” asked a little girl standing on the sand city’s doorstep.

  “No”, I said, “Now we’re going to destroy it.”

   Silence… One of the kids choked up an unbeliever’s, “What!?!?”

   “Yes… It’s time to destroy it.  Everyone, we’re all going to run in at the same time and flatten it!”  The kids didn’t believe me. They couldn’t conceive that after a days work, I would pulverize my results into the nothingness it came from. 

   You see, I knew. I grew up on this lake and knew that sand castles never last. They are never permanent.  I could take a picture, but the picture would never reflect what it took to make it.  A picture wouldn’t have captured my pride and it certainly wouldn’t have captured the awe in the faces of all the surrounding kids.  No. A picture wouldn’t capture this moment.  I would have to simply need to remember it.  This castle would represent my waning youth. 

   I took a mark’s stance in the water, let out a childhood howl and ran directly toward the center of the city and pushed the largest structure over.  I said to the kids, “C’mon! Come help!!!” With that, they all came running too, with pure joy on their faces! Sand flew three, four feet in the air, and within a few short minutes the castle was a beautiful, peaceful beach again.

   I knew at the time this was a beginning of a life lesson…. a lesson that would continue to play out in the lives around me….

                 (to be continued…..)

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