Is it a story she remembers or one that her grandmother told her? Recounted over and over at birthday parties, and Mother’s Day brunches, and Christmas dinners until it had become truth, internalized. Regardless of where the story came from, the little girl in it – swim-suit clad, bare foot, brown hair bleached blond by the sun, sprinting across the wide sandy beach while sea gulls scattered before her like leaves before wind – that little girl was her.
“You were so joyful, so happy. I’ve never seen anyone so excited,” her grandmother would say, looking at her fondly, eyes lit up from the inside by the warmth of the memory. “That day on the beach, when you saw those tide pools… you just took off and ran through each and every one. I thought, ‘your mother will be so angry’ because you were soaking wet!”
The girl’s feet are larger now, but they still leave the same-shaped prints in the sand as the slap along – smack, smack, smack – the sound barely audible over the roar of the waves and the steady rush of the wind. Kites pepper the sky in the distance, but this stretch of beach is all hers. It could be the same section of beach from 25 years ago or a different one. It’s hard to say. Times change, sand shifts, patterns form, girls grow up, but the beach is still the beach.
She reaches the tide pools to find they have also changed. They’re smaller than she remembers, of course, their depths barely reaching her ankles instead of rising to her knees as she jumps in each one. The water is lukewarm from the sun, in striking contrast to the waves that pound the sand to her right. Her swimsuit has been replaced by slacks that are roughly rolled up to her knees and are soaking wet and salt-crusted. She has dropped her purse, shoes, and jacket further down the beach; both so they’d stay dry and so she could remember what it felt like to be fearless and free; young and unencumbered.
She reaches the end of the tide pools and closes her eyes, letting the wind blow flecks of sand and dried seaweed against her ankles. Here, forgetting and remembering become one and she is at peace.
Wander Font 