This thought first crossed my mind after we had all
settled in with our beach chairs, towels and umbrellas. I decided to sink
into my own chair with a drink and a book and got about three pages in when my
husband called me over to help. Big bro was desperate to start building his sandcastle,
while all little bro wanted to do was eat sand. I reluctantly put my book down
and picked it up again exactly zero more times. The book sat in my beach bag taunting
me alongside the four magazines that I had also brought (silly me, I had previously
contemplated whether that would be enough reading material).
I realized that I probably wouldn’t be making it to
the spa this vacation.
Then it started raining.
With my family huddled under umbrellas trying to
stay dry, I decided it would be a good time to pick up some lunch for us. By
the time I arrived back with a bag of goodies, the sun had come out again and I
started to get back into vacation mode. I doled out chicken fingers, French fries,
fish tacos, pulled pork sandwiches, and frozen lemonades. I sank into my chair
and was about to bite into my fish taco when suddenly a seagull swarmed down right
in front of my son and ripped into his chicken fingers. The seagull flew away,
I recovered from my mini heart attack, and we all just sat there staring at the
nibbled on chicken. I made the neurotic mommy decision that it would be too
gross to let my son finish his lunch, and after much cajoling he finally agreed
to share my lunch. Surprisingly, he ended up finishing a whole fish taco.
After lunch, we endeavored to get little Bro down
for a nap. We were certain that the ocean air and soothing sounds of the nearby
waves would lull him to sleep in a matter of minutes. Instead, we ended up
spending the next half hour struggling to get him to stop squirming away from
us in his quest to find more sand to ingest. I looked around at the other
adults sitting nearby, lounging with drinks in hand, napping, reading or just gazing
at the ocean. Feeling defeated, I turned back to my one-year-old, who was
grinning at me with a mouthful of sand. I couldn’t help but grin right back. Then
I looked over at his big bro who was busy at work burying his poor daddy in the
sand and I couldn’t help but start giggling.
I’ve decided to change the meaning of the expression
“life’s a beach”. For me, that now means that sometimes life can be hard, but it
is also totally worth it. You may not be able to read your book like you
planned, but you may end up helping to construct your child’s first sandcastle.
It may start raining at any moment, but when the sun comes back out you
appreciate it even more. You may lose a chicken finger or two along the way,
but maybe your kid will end up trying something new. You may try to get your
one-year-old down for a nap….yeah, there really wasn’t any silver lining to
that one…