Idol Survivor: "You, My Girl"

[halfshellvenus]

You, My Girl
idol survivor | daily-fic challenge, day 2 | 139 words

x-x-x-x-x

Toes in the sand,
you dig and scoop and sculpt,
engrossed in your artistry
as with every creation
you will make
in the many years to come.

In and out of the waves
you run like a colt,
a sprite, a shining girl,
never noticing
the bone-deep cold
mottling your skin
even under the warmth
of the summer sun.

Your fingers in mine
are soft and perfect
as we walk the shore,
seeking treasures
raised from the sea
by the churning tide.

This will not last.

Before long, your hand—
your heart—
will be too restless
to remain by my side.

In and out of the house
you will run, a young woman
called by her friends, her future,
never noticing
the bone-deep ache
under my goodbyes
even though this is who
I helped you grow up to become.


--/--

Comments

[gunwithoutmusic]

This was so beautiful. It brought my mind to my niece, who is four-and-a-half years old. On Sunday, my husband and I were having lunch at my parents' house (we're trying to make it "a thing," these Sunday lunches, trying to spend more time with family), and my father had connected his laptop to the TV and was going through his Google Photos. Originally, the point was to show us some videos of the concert that my mom and dad had attended on Friday, but he ended up scrolling through a few years worth of photos and videos, and there were a few of my niece on the beach, just running around, digging in the sand, rolling around in it - she is just obsessed with the beach!

It's funny because my sister and I both hate the beach - I've warmed back up to the idea of beach days lately, but I still hate the sand. I hate that it gets in everything, I hate that it ends up all over my car for what seems like weeks afterward, I just hate it so much. My sister shares those sentiments, but she still takes her daughter out to the beach when they're visiting Florida because my niece just loves it so much. I have to admit that watching her pure unadulterated joy when she's playing in the sand makes me see the appeal a little bit. This was just great. :)

[halfshellvenus]

Thank you so much! I wondered if this might bring your niece to mind, and the pangs are so much stronger when you're a parent whose child has passed through teenhood and beyond. Children are so incredibly sweet when they're little, and as they get older, that fades, of course. But you still remember the person they were at that age, at all the ages-- a series of different little instances of your child, and you love and miss every one of them individually.

I always loved the beach as a kid, and my Dad hated it, so sometimes my mother would take just us kids to the cabin for the weekend. If he was along, my Dad would come out once or twice and make a driftwood fire for roasting hotdogs and marshmallows. But mostly, he just stayed indoors.

As an adult, the sand sometimes gets on my nerves, especially if we happen to be at the Central Oregon coast in the summer, because it can be windy there. Blowing sand is the worst. But with the kids, we always had rattan mats to set things on, and folding chairs for the grown-ups, and I kept the sand away from the food and off the mats. Plus, we kept a "wiping off" towel in the car that was just used for dusting the sand off our bodies before leaving for the day. That eliminates a LOT of the grief, even if you're a family that lives in sunblock, like ours.

It's funny--one of my nemeses when the kids were little was the sand at their daycare and at school. It's this rough, reddish-brown, clayish stuff that stains everything if it happens to get wet. SO much hate. And I'd never encountered sand like that before. The sand in Oregon, and the rest of the Pacific coast, is silver sand! There's no dirt or chunks in it at all!

The first time we took our son to the beach in Oregon, he was almost two. He stumbled on the way up a dune we were crossing to get to shore, and then he lay there and rubbed his arms and legs over that warm, silky, silver sand like he was making a sand angel. He was clearly luxuriating in the feeling of it.

My mother was right behind him, and she just smiled and said, "I'll wait with him until he's ready to go again." I think she truly understood what he was feeling. :)