The finely ground sand from the beach was warm and welcoming. The tiny pieces stuck to my feet as if they were coated with glue. As I tried to steady myself on the unstable sand, it swallowed each step I took as my feet sank into it, causing to trip. This was the sand that sits under the beach umbrellas and the people chatting about tan lines. This was the dry, pretty sand that tourists enjoy scooping up and pouring into jars that would evidently be left to collect dust on an abandoned shelf in their homes. This was the sand that adults think make up the beach. I almost began to believe this illusion until my brother snapped me back into reality.

“Let’s make sand castles!”
It only took four words from my brother for me to realize that somewhere between childhood and adulthood, most people forget the real treasure of the beach: the wet sand on the shore line. When we started building our castle, two young children ran over to help us. The bigger our sand castle got, the more the waves fought to rip it apart grain by grain. In the end, after a long hard fought battle, we lost as the merciless waves sliced through our outer wall, filled the moat in less than a second, and demolished our carefully detailed castle like a bulldozer. That day I learned two very important life lesson. First, creativity and one’s inner child never cease to exist. And second, don’t ever build a sand castle right next to an incoming tide.