Many years ago, we found our little slice of heaven along the Florida coast, and it’s been a yearly stop ever since. Now we tow our family down for a week and build as many memories as we can shovel into a beach bucket. After a couple of days acclimating to laziness, I rediscover what playfulness looks like from two grandsons as we form a battle line against nature’s forces.
The red warning flag has been out for the last two days, and high tide’s been throwing everything that it has at us. As green foamy waves crash over one another, lines of brownish foam bubble-masses form on the edge of the surf and are pushed by the wind across the sand like aliens from an interplanetary dishwasher. Eerily skin-like, they seem to propel themselves along by their own slime, then suddenly peel off and evaporate into the beach as if to regroup to a world underground. Within moments, another line of bubbles has erupted from the surf and is racing towards us, slithering up to cover our toes.
“RUUUUN! It’s the Sudsy-Slime!!” I shriek. “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”
I gather the troops downwind just long enough for me to explain that this is imaginary goop that is invading Earth and taking over. It’s time for a group hug, just for safety I tell them and a chilly wind kicks up and dodges between us. A good excuse to throw the Star Wars towel around us for a moment, make a huddle for our next play, a plan of attack on the world. Alien slime is allergic to hugs, so I draw the four- and six-year-old in close, like a grandfather Jedi should, wrap both my arms around them, and tell them we are safe for now.
Their eyes turn big as flying saucers and I point to the sky where a pretend starship from Planet Eyeball just disappeared into the clouds at warp speed. My warnings can barely be heard over the crashing surf, and a new atmosphere is upon us. The war is on. It’s the Forces of Imagination and Play against the dreaded Sudsy-Slime!
Up where mom and dad lounge in their beach chairs, a colorful array of molded plastic toys are scattered about, now half buried by blowing sand. The toys are fresh out of the bag, but they seem like outcasts next to the warehouse of jetsam junk the sea has tossed up, chewed, broken and unspoiled.
Have you noticed that kids never get tired of what the sea deposits? It is the nature-nothings than become our necklaces, our talismans, and faded pictures on our mantels back home.
Today, the best choices are the scratchy palmetto husks, and we use them to write messages in the sand to a coast guard helicopter whirling overhead. Was that the interplanetary starship we saw earlier? Never mind, our letters aren’t legible. They are in kid language, indecipherable and washed away by the incoming surf, but they not wasted to us.
The sudsy foam pushes us further back and back even further, melting our capital letters away. We make another attempt to write in the sand again but there’s no time to waste! The camouflaged whirligig, our pretend alien above, has spotted us and is circling back! We are not grown up yet, not ready to be out in the open. We don’t want to be teleported up in a beam of ’phistication and ‘sponsibility or other words we aren’t ready for.
We split for cover up near the dune where high tide has already made its mark. In a small oval of shade, behind a few sea oats, we duck down and hide, but are not alone. As the copter whizzes by, we discover a casualty in the sand, a large snow crab, barely alive, surrendering to the heat and ocean’s brown slime.
“Oh my gosh, look!” says Six-Year-Old. “A crab! It’s still alive! It’s only got four legs! And a GIANT PINCHER!”
We bend low to watch the half-crab, still wiggling.
“I think I see one eye looking back at us!” I say, pointing to the skeletal creature.
“Us?” Says Four-Year-Old.
“Yea, there’s one big crab eye!” I whisper as if it could hear us.
We poke the crab, watching the beady, telescoping eye rotate around and look at us again.
“That eye is a spy from Planet Eyeball!” says Six-Year-Old.
“A spy?” Says the younger.
We stare for a moment at each other, then back at the alien monster from Planet Eyeball.
“What happened to it?” says Six- and Four-Year-Old.
I could give them a serious answer, one filled with knowledge and wisdom, but they are not looking for answers, really, not when there is a big eye, bulging, looking at _us_.
“RUN EVERYBODY! RUN!” I yell, and like retreating troops taking fire, we scamper over the dune. But we are taking a break from the Beach of Real and allowing our playful visions to succumb to the gravitational pull of the moon on a lighthearted sea. We are Sand Soldiers on leave from active duty, intrepid explorers saving the planet from the Sudsy-Slime of maturity, one crab eye at a time.