Changing tides

Remember when beach trips were incredibly relaxing?

Lying by the ocean for hours, listening to the symphony of the waves, entirely relaxed.  Feeling somehow closer to heaven.  At peace, even with hundreds of people all around.  Kicking the worries of melanoma down the road.

Relaxing is not a word I would use to describe taking your 6-year-old and 8-year-old to the beach.  Because now those peaceful waves that once lulled you to sleep have become danger-ridden death traps.  And those other people?  The ones you once could pretend were a million miles away?  Any one of them could be a child-snatcher.  Or even worse, someone who wants to radicalize kids into being kind and tolerant.  You must be vigilant! 

And lying by the ocean for hours?  Don't make me laugh -- or, cry. (Hang on, I need a moment.)

There's no time for that.  For now, we must build sandcastles -- or, at least, serve as an errand boy and waddle your aging rear down to the water to collect pailfuls for those who do build.  

We must also play football.  Yes, football.  American football.  Not only that, we must make a football field in the sand, with goalposts and yard lines and yard line numbers.  And if it should get washed away by the waves or destroyed by footprints, well we must make it again the very next day.  Thus says the gospel according to Lucas: Year 8, Month 4.

But you find joy in other things.  Not physical joy, but nonetheless.

It comes as you watch them run towards the chilly waves before screaming and turning to run away as the uprush gushes over their feet and ankles.

As you see your son's excitement over seeing a shark.  (Or maybe a dolphin.  There was some debate on the sand.)  And again when he piles up little balls of wet sand so you ask what he's doing, and he answers almost breathlessly, "This is shark bait.  The shark is gonna look up here and see it and think it's food, and he will swim towards shore so we can get a better look at him."

But friends, I feel the tide beginning to change, so to speak.

Last October, we slipped away to Perdido for a four-day weekend while the kids had fall break, staying with my uncle and his partner, whom I shall henceforth refer to as "the uncles."

Our first day on the beach Mrs. B and I found ourselves in the water when a most unexpected event occurred.  Were we approached by a hungry bullshark?  Swarmed by a school of stingrays?  Pulled into peril by a fierce riptide?

No, not this trip.  What happened that day was even more unlikely.  An occurrence so rare that it hadn't happened in over eight years.  Many thought it would never be seen again.

We found ourselves alone.  Together.  In the ocean.

It was so inconceivable that it took ten or fifteen minutes before we even realized it.  Looking coastward we saw both kids playing contentedly with the uncles.  

So this is what freedom feels like.

This March, we returned for spring break.  The emancipation of the dependents continued to progress.  The uncles kept the kids while Mrs. B and I got not one night out to dinner, but two.

The kids have gone from only wanting to play in the sand and not even go near the water, to only going in the water if one of us is holding them, to running into the waves with reckless abandon while giving Dad multiple near heart attacks.

To have a child is to re-experience life, to re-experience the world anew.  It's as if your heart has exited your body and is forever traveling with them wherever they go, always on the verge of breaking, or leaping.

Relaxing, it is not.

Rewarding?  More than I could have ever imagined.