October through January is the best kept Crystal Beach secret. The beach itself is free from cars and seaweed and has a wonderful, otherworldly peaceful feeling. You can stand and look into the water and not see any other people; it’s just you and creation. Of course, people are creation too, but it’s a different spiritual moment with just you, God, and the waves.
At the end of the trip, a long stretch at the beach feels just like a weekend at the beach because every day is basically the same. Spend time on the beach, cram in board games during naptime and after bedtime, hang out on the deck. Repeat.
I ambitiously brought three books with me, which was never going to happen, but I did -by a carefully calculated turn of events that included staying with Tate during his morning nap while everyone else went to the beach or fishing and spending the entire time in the bathtub with my book- finish one. Plus I was able to squeeze in a paragraph or two with the perfect trifecta: book, beer, cheese and crackers.
(A quick nerdy tangent…the book I read was about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, five stars, loved it. I now (vaguely) want a copy of the OED and it appears that a full set is approximately $1000. In real life, my Merriam-Webster’s has always worked well for me and I can barely get through an OED definition with all its word origins, so I’m not adding that to my Christmas list this year.)
Do you think Tate’s still teething?
Shells must have a much richer flavor than steamed veggies.
My mom is the master of finding sharks’ teeth. My mom and dad have a little jar on the kitchen windowsill full of sharks’ teeth that they found on the beach. It involves a lot of looking for “that certain glint” in a stretch of broken shells like this:
My mom claims that once you get the hang of it you can just tell the difference between a shark’s tooth and a broken shell. As for me, I picked up about four hundred broken black shells before finally finding my first shark’s tooth ever!
I started my own sharks’ teeth jar, currently holding two teeth.
Please take a moment to ponder how quickly day breaks, illustrated by Rush watching my dad and Trent get the boat ready to go fishing.
And five hours later, here he is checking out the fish.
A test of my patience as a mother arrives when I start building a sandcastle with Rush, only to have to hold back from yelling “STOP KNOCKING OVER MY SANDCASTLE.” I mean, he does have to learn to stop knocking over people’s sandcastles and we’re working on that. But I have to remind myself that just like I’m having fun digging the moat, he’s having fun filling it back in behind me. Grr. We’re both growing. Without Rush’s influence I never would have thought to jump all over the castle and destroy before leaving the beach, but that’s what we did. It was, in fact, satisfying. Dust to dust.
Any moment spent on the beach with Rush and Tate is among the best moments of my life, every time.
And one more notable moment in our world: Rush has graduated out of the pack and play. He kind of moved into a bunk bed, kind of not.
We’re all home, happy, semi-unpacked, reacquainting ourselves with real life responsibilities. To quote the boys’ favorite beach book, Goodnight Beach:
Shine bright all night lighthouse. Goodnight beach. Thank you for sharing a wonderful day.
I have access to the OED through work. I love it.
ReplyDelete