Sea Glass

Saturday afternoon we decided we needed a small adventure. We packed up the car with our two inflatable paddle boards, a couple buckets and shovels, some snacks and water bottles, and drove thirty minutes to the beach. It was a busy Saturday and we only had an hour or two to spare; additionally, current restrictions allow for just groups of two, so that meant we had to do our our best to stay on our own.

When we arrived at the little patch of beach, we discovered, to our delight, that we were the only ones around. Trent hurried to blow up the paddle board, while Asher and Lillian took to the sand, building a castle and pausing intermittently to dance in the waves on the shore. In no time flat Trent had filled the paddle board and was off in the waves, his single profile silhouetted against the literal ocean full of shipping vessels parked just off the greenish waters of East Coast Park.

Eventually the pull of the water and Trent's paddle board were too tempting to Lillian and she was off with her dad in the waves. I looked up several times to see her dive bombing off the paddle board into the water and I swear once or twice I heard her laugh bouncing along the waves. I felt in that moment like she left her middle school self, filled at times with angst and anxiety, on the sandy shores, and her true exuberant self came spilling out of her, laughing and joyful.

Asher and I stayed on along the shore. For a few minutes, he busied himself with his sand castle. I walked along the line made by larger shells and bits of seaweed, marking the place in the sand where the high tide had hit highest then receded, leaving in its retreat treasures for us to discover.

 I called to Asher when I found bits and pieces of crab, a claw in one place and a piece of leg in another; not so much grisly as fascinating. I called him over again and he came running when I found a small little fish, dead but pretty somehow, flashing bits of iridescent silver in the afternoon sun. And then he came running again when I found a shell split apart so that it looked like butterfly wings, and from there he began treasure hunting with me, yelling his delight when he found a bit of green sea glass. I handed him a white shell and he took it and the sea glass back to his sand castle and arranged it on the top, proudly proclaiming that now the castle had jewels encrusted in it. 

And so went our time, slowly but marvelously. As we hunted along the shore for more treasure, we could see Lillian and Trent paddling in the ocean nearby. I took a long, deep breath and felt that the anxiety of pandemic restrictions and work pressure lifting off my shoulders. I even found a tiny bit of sea glass in the most beautiful shade of cornflower blue; the same color of the sky. I put it in the pocket of my beach bag as a tangible representation of the moment. It's sitting here on my nightstand as I type this, still the same color of the sky that day. 

Sea glass feels like a metaphor for--so many things. In a former life, that smooth, soft stone really was a jagged piece of glass, presumably, trash of some kind that made its way, unfortunately, to the ocean. But the wonder of the sea is that the waves and their constant movement and tossing and turning and crashing against the sand rub away all those jagged edges until the glass becomes something smooth and even beautiful. It's the opposite of entropy; one of those rare cases of a thing that gets better the more banged around it is.