This one time I went to the beach

Today I decided to jog along the lovely stretch of beach in Del Mar near my apartment.  Sometimes I like to jog in the mornings during the week where bits of my story comes to me in little snippets.  I think the beach inspires me.  One time I went for a jog and saw seaglass on the sand and was touched.  I had read this book called "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake" where the main character, this little girl, was described as seaglass by her mother.  Since then, the sight of seaglass makes me smile.

Today was more of a sight-seeing day since the beach was crowded with families and couples rather than the occasional jogger.  There was a young family on their way to the beach with Tommy Bahama chairs strapped to the parents' back.  They had two young girls with blonde hair so light it was almost white.  I couldn't help but notice that the youngest girl wore flip flops that were too big on her, as though they once belonged to her older sister.  I liked being close to them, as though I was somehow sharing an integral moment of their lives.

It was warm though the sun liked to hide behind the clouds most of the late morning.  As I jogged along the beach I noticed my surroundings.  There was a little boy about seven years old making a large W in the sand with his hand and I wondered how much sand he would get underneath his fingernails.  All that grit just to write in the sand.  Why not use a stick or your finger I wondered.  There was another family with two little girls although they were older, maybe five and seven.  They wore hats on their heads and bathing suits with a long sleeved top.  One wore pink and the other purple.  When the tide left, their father pointed in the sand and they quickly dug for what I can only imagine are sand crabs.

I remembered my own father showing my sisters and me how to find them.  They were so ugly but I liked how their legs tickled my hand.  I could almost remember those days at the beach when I was their age, burying our Barbies in the sand, making sand castles so huge you could sit in the middle of them.  The first thing my father would do was start digging a giant hole with our buckets.  Vanesa and I liked constructing the walls and getting the water.  Sometimes we'd get too much water and we'd have to re-construct the walls again.  I liked sitting in the middle of the castle and working from the inside out.  I would get so much sand inside my bathing suit but I didn't care.  I wonder if anyone would say anything if I brought a Barbie, a shovel and a pail to the beach and construct a giant sand castle all by myself.  I should try that sometime.