Sands of Time

The night is perfect, if not a little too windy. One of those spring evenings on the lakeshore where you feel like you have finally cheated the long, harsh winter. I watch my son and daughter play in the sand at Lake Erie’s edge. He looks like Huck Finn, I think, as he saddles up to the world’s largest piece of driftwood. His giant flat feet slap the sand as he counts with his sister: “1, 2, 3, lift!” They are not quite strong enough to heave the driftwood back to sea. He insists on calling it the sea, this sandy-headed adventurer with the impish grin. It always makes me giggle.

The lake is crystal clear underneath the breakers that kiss the shore tonight. The algae has not yet had time to grow and the winter’s freeze has kept the water clean and pure so far. The air is sweltering and so odd for April. My kids run in and out of the water, being careful to avoid the rocks at the bottom. I dip my toes in and have to jump back immediately. The water is too cold for my adult sensibilities. But I watch them “accidentally on purpose” fall into the water in their clothes. Now they have no choice but to frolic and swim. It has been a very long time since I was the little girl, playing inside the break-wall and chasing waves with my father. We called this place Rocky Bottoms, a name we coined that still holds true now some thirty years later. Both the name and the place, it seemed, were like our own little secret.

I am grateful to see so many people enjoying the wonders of nature this night. It seems like so many nights I have been here alone. But tonight is different. There is a family of seven on the break-wall nearby. They spell out O-H-I-O for a picture, minus the baby who is busy eating sand. There is an older couple up top watching the action from a bench. The snack cooler between them gets some use before they shuffle back to their car. A burly young man uses the boat launch for his twenty-footer and a couple of jet skies throw their wake nearby. There are other families with sand buckets and young kids and older people with dogs and bikes. A few teen-agers giddy with the freedom of warm weather round out the scene. We are all reveling in nature’s best party, a sunset overlooking the lake on a perfect evening like tonight.

I can’t imagine a world where north wasn’t Lake Erie and I couldn’t hear the many moods of the water from my front yard a half mile away. I don’t know that I could subscribe to a life without Lake Effect Snow and the cooling summer breezes that keep temperatures sane in the deep heat. And I sure don’t think a childhood is complete without skipping rocks and getting sand in your shoes. And your hair.
And your heart.