Sandcastles

I am the old man on the porch. Mount Baker sits across the bay, rising above the clouds to capture the mid-afternoon sun. The tide is at its lowest. A dozen sandbars of varying browns stretch out in its wake, beaching speedboats, dotted with humans and crabs.

I sip water from a blue cup, appreciating my gift from nature. The conversation lulls, we elderly folks sinking into a familiar trance. The dream-world before us crawls upon our porch, creeps among us, stealing our words to leave soft silence.

Our family is out on the beach, enjoying the ritual of a young tradition. They are shovelling substance, carving character, hands in a relentless pat against the sand: creating a dragon. The ramparts of yesterday's castle, a ring of sand and stone, became her hollow belly. The first task was to rebuild their height and girth, simultaneously digging a moat. My son Joseph, the lead architect, began the dragon's head as a sand heap and a request for a log this long (three feet) and this wide (half a foot), to support her upper jaw. Waiting, he formed her lower one: its distinction from the dune, the lip, the sharp teeth, even a lolling tongue. The upper jaw was more fun: flaring nostrils, a scaly snout curled into a goofy snarl, arching eyebrows, eyes of blue-grey rock. Spikes trail from forehead down the neck, up, splitting at the top of the walls, following the height of each to rejoin and dip with the curling tail. Four of my teenage grandchildren take on a limb each: the left arm is built long and skinny, with manicured nails; the right arm curves bonelessly, bearing six talons; the left leg is beefy, the foot as big as a steering wheel, claws blunt; the right leg trails off at the elbow (abandoned when Naomi joined my nieces to see if the tide reached the mile marker today).

The site is a hive of activity. Naomi announces her return with a sandball splattering onto Joel's back--he shrieks, jumps up and starts chasing her. Phoebe teaches her daughter Eileen to toss the frisbee for our half-blind Australian cattle dog. Isaac, Marc, and Theo wrestle, before flopping dramatically into a tidepool to rinse the sand out of their hair. People stop to admire, strike up a conversation as their dogs sniff about the dragon (with little regard for art) or chase seagulls. Joseph shades his eyes, counting the eight remaining sandbars. My nephew Alex stands to greet his wife, who just left the porch to tell everyone that lunch is ready.

This is the annual family gathering, when relatives from my side and my wife's drift in and out for potluck dinners, late-night card games, picnics, general relaxation, and, of course, sand sculpting. This is how I've spent every August for as long as I recall.

The children are leaving the beach: dropping their spades and skimboards, splashing through the nearest tide-pool, toeing across the barnacle-encrusted rocks, sprinting through the hot soft sand, climbing up the grass, washing their feet in the kiddie pool, and ascending the stairs to meet the old man on the porch.

"Hey Grandpa!"


I smile, lift my granddaughter delicately and seat her wet frame upon my lap. I answer in a gravelly voice I would not have recognized ten years ago.

"Hello there, sweet."

She inherited my wife's beautiful moss green eyes. "Daddy says you used to help us."

"Sure did, my little beach barnacle." (This is my favourite phrase for the little ones, originating when they would climb and hang on to me out on the beach. Get off this old rock, you pesky barnacles!) "But it's no longer my turn, you see. It's yours. You all have the wonderful opportunity to make..." I gesture broadly, "dragons and turtles and castles and--"

"Fat guys," she finishes briskly, referring to this summer's reigning achievement.

"Of course, never forget the fat guys." I tickle her till she squirms off my lap. "Go eat something," I suggest, patting her head in true grandfatherly fashion.

As she skips off to the kitchen, Alex takes her place--albeit in a chair and not my lap. A lime lies at the bottom of his corona like a sunken ship, spouting bubbles.

"Forgot how hard this sandcastle business was," he admits.

"Enjoy it while it lasts, kid," I reply with a chuckle, promptly followed by a hearty wheeze that adds fair weight to my point.

I inherited this cabin from my own Grandpa Finn, who won the 1910 Lacrosse World Championship and the same summer bought this plot of land with the prize money. He built a one-room cabin (now our living room), while his wife tended a garden out back (still a garden), and lived a quietly boisterous life till he drowned at age eighty-eight. He was my old man on the porch, the original. Over the course of sixty summers here, I grew from wild boy to college student, from proud father to doting grandfather. I built the first sandcastle with Joseph on his fifth birthday. Watching the tide devour it, we both fell in love with this simple task. He could hardly wait to share the new game with his cousins.

"...and it's really been far too long, you know," my nephew says. "Last year we stayed home because of the kids' soccer, and the year before was our European trip."

"Oh yes... how was that?" I ask absently.

"Lovely, lovely. Sasha adored Paris; Joel and Marissa wanted to stay in Greece forever."

"Of course," I reply. "I heard it's a magnificent place.... Well, we're all glad you're here now."

"Same, same, and something special here too, eh?"

I nod. "Oh yes. And there's something about building those sandcastles. Seeing all your hard work go to waste makes you whole again."

He slowly agrees, though I have a feeling he doesn't understand. I sigh; then he says something I don't expect:

"But it's not really wasted. There's always the imprint you can see the next day, kind of a shadow, a reminder."

"Ah, well said. However weak your castle, there is always a bit left. Of course, eventually the tide will sweep it all away. But if we keep building the next castle upon the foundations of the last...."

Alex finishes his beer as Joseph rounds up the children for the short trek back to their fortress. Only two sandbars remain.

My own days of working on the beach are over and gone. Two years ago, I paid my debts, retired and quit building sandcastles. I also learned I have terminal cancer. Attempting to cure me, Doctor Simon pushed to begin treatment immediately. Chemotherapy, the murderous saviour.

I was angry--more angry than I had ever been. Only fifty-eight, I was healthy, still strong and mobile; I'd waited my whole life to be the old man on the porch! I faced a choice I had never considered.

Two of my grandsons are frantically shovelling sand on the weak points of the wall. Naomi and Joel scurry after them, patting the wet sand down firm. Alex stands on the vanishing next sandbar, showing Sasha how the water slithers, second by ponderous second, cresting tiny cliffs into minute valleys. We now play the closing stages of the game, though we know tides always conquer castles.

There was a storm the night I chose. Seated under the awning and wearing my warmest sweater, I wanted to see it. In all its beauty and power, I wanted to experience it: to live that storm. Gathered during the rainy season in April, it raged with awesome fury. The salty air whipped to and fro, the waves rocked mightily, hammering my dear beach. This was a storm which slaughtered sea life en masse, tore away kelp and snatched back driftwood long left to idle. As I watched my ocean torn asunder by great gusts of wind, my sky shorn by streaks of lightning, I realized I was tired of fighting.

The tide returns from its two mile journey, eating the last sandbar, nibbling a dragon. The children stand within her hollow belly, laughing, screaming, shouting, patching defences, playfully battling the almighty. Joseph sits beside me, silently watching the game play out; knee-deep, Alex carries Sasha back to shore. The moat fills and overflows, the rock eyes sink, the snarling teeth sunder, the driftwood snout floats inland, the tail is swallowed, the limbs flatten, the noble walls dip... and are breached.

I feel an ancient tide rising around us. On the foundations left by Grandpa Finn, our family built something tough and beautiful and doomed. During the last two years we sat comfortably inside our walls, laughing, enjoying the game's end, and planning tomorrow's creation. As this old sandcastle trembles, I prepare to wade back to shore, sprint across the hot sand and up the stairs into the arms of my old man on the porch, hungry, happy, and home.


"Sandcastles" to be published in the first issue of the magazine Spacey

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