Building Sandcastles
His weary eyes followed the black bar as it made its way back up to the start of the page. Groaning, he watched as his hours of work were slowly wiped off the computer screen. He took his right forefinger from the backspace and moved his hands through his dark, scruffy mop of hair. Maybe his ex-wife was right. He pushed off the basement floor, sent the empty chair flying across the dimly lit room and watched as it went crashing into the wall. Taking off his glasses and placing them next to his notepad on the desk, he went up stairs and made a cup of strong coffee. He somehow managed to drain it in less than a minute. His eyes caught sight of the state of his lawn when he went to place his cup in the sink, which was overflowing with week old dishes. The lawn was in such bad shape that the people in the community seemed to avoid it as they went for their morning walks. The shrubs were once trimmed every week, the grass always cut and the flowers… The flowers weren’t dead like they were now… He remembered that his wife had taken care of the flowers. Her face would be marked with displeasure. The last time he saw her she wasn’t too happy either.
“How are you going to support us as a writer? Why don’t you just take that job at my brother’s company?” she asked. Getting more and more furious when he repeated that he had made up his mind. The fight went on for days, but following two weeks of quiet seething she found him in the kitchen preparing dinner.
“Fine. You made up your mind. It seems that you have your whole life sorted out. I can’t convince you to listen to me, so I too have made of my mind.” He didn’t say anything to prevent her from leaving. She moved out a day later.
What he really needed was to go outside. He couldn’t remember the last time he had opened the front door.
Stepping outside, he got an instant headache from the sun. He went back inside to get his sunglasses, which were buried beneath a pile of old newspapers that had piled up on his dinner table. He glanced at the date on one of the papers and become conscious of the fact that he had no idea what day it was. Stepping back outside he began walking. His neighbor John Nelson was having a beer on his front porch. John was waving at him, but he ignored John, kept his head down and walked faster. He really didn’t know where he was going, but stopped went he reached the beach. He first saw a bench powdered with grains of sand, he brushed some of them off, sat down and then he surveyed his surroundings. There was a young man and woman who were having a picnic. He could hear them laughing and felt the familiar pang of jealously. He turned his head away. There were a few other people. A little boy who was having trouble building a sandcastle, someone he assumed to be the little boy’s mother and a few teenagers swimming in the warm water.
“Hello.”
The voice made him jump and he turned to see who had broken the silence. It was a small woman in her eighties who had sat down beside him. He gave her an awkward smile and turned his eyes to the ocean.
“I’m sorry I scared you. I just thought that you might want some company.” She waited for his reply, but never got one. She looked like she was in pain as she struggled to get up, to leave him to his silence. He felt bad, so he turned and told her to stay. They sat there for a while, each one off in their own little world. The lady turned to him and told him that she had never seen anyone look so sad.
“I thought how odd. It’s such a beautiful day. The sun is so bright. It brings everything alive. See, just look at the ocean.” She said this as she pointed with her finger that quivered from the effort of the motion. He looked, but he could not see the beauty that she could so effortlessly. He lied to her when he nodded his head. It did appear to please the old lady. She once again pointed to various things around the beach and spoke about their beauty. He began to tune her out. He focused on the sand at his feet and started to push it around with the toe of his shoe. He took a quick look beside him and saw that the old lady had gone. He noticed that he still had his sunglasses on and that there was no need for them, so he took them off and put them in his pocket. Then, he went back to pushing the sand.
“Excuse me mister?” He looked up to see the little boy who had been trying to build a sandcastle and his mother standing beside him. “I was just wondering if you had something that I could put on my castle.” He glanced over the little boy’s shoulder to see that he had succeeded in building a sandcastle. It wasn’t perfect, but it was standing. He asked the boy how long it took him to build the castle.
Smiling, the little boy said, “A long time. It kept falling down.” The man asked him why he just didn’t give up. The little boy looked at him like he was nuts and said, “If I gave up every time that the sandcastle fell down, I’d never build a sandcastle.” The mother added, “Think about it, if every time you built a sandcastle it was perfect, then the excitement of building a perfect castle would fade. The effort makes the finished product that much nicer.” The mother bent and kissed the top of her son’s sandy blond head. Convinced that the man didn’t have anything to give him, the boy returned to his sandcastle. He watched as the boy walked away with his mother and he smiled. He stayed for a little while, until the sun went down and everyone left the beach to return to warm homes. He told himself that it was his time to go too, so he got off the bench and made his way home. This time around he waved to John, who was still sitting on his porch.
Going down stairs, he fetched his chair from across the room, turned on his computer and began writing. He wrote about pursuing dreams, ones that may lead nowhere, finding people who will support your leaps of faith and the importance of sunglasses. But, most of all he wrote about a little old lady who saw beauty wherever she looked and a boy who built imperfect sandcastles all day long.
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