Day 254 - Sandcastle Story

Sandcastle Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Phillip had come to the beach to enjoy one of the final days of summer. Midday was still warm enough, but the weather was turning. The nights were cool – there had even been one recent night where he could have worn a jacket. The summer was ending.

Philip had wanted to build a bonfire while the sun set and then watch the flickering flames and let his mind wander. This had been one of his favorite locations in the city, although it never felt like he was in a city when he was here. The sand dunes were tall and the ocean was wide open and the way the coast curved it was very hard to see where the beaches ended and the city began. Off in the distance there were little glimmering lights, but he could convince himself that those could have been anything. When he was here, he felt alone, secluded, away. He felt away from it all.

Traffic had been light and he had gotten to the beach early, and yet somehow all the bonfire pits were taken. He wandered around the bicycle trail along the beach. He didn’t want to walk too far, but he also couldn’t sit still, waiting for someone to abandon their pit. There were too many memories for him to sit still with nothing else to do.

Impatient, he returned to the bonfire area. He walked near the ocean, watching his feet sink in the soft wet sand. He liked to stand there barefoot and then step aside and watch the moisture fill in the impression of his feet. Then the waves would come in and cover his feet and the impressions they left. After a bit, it would be like he hadn’t been there at all – all evidence of his path would be washed away.

Phillip found himself building a sandcastle. He hadn’t built a sandcastle since he was a child. That wasn’t exactly true. Emma had liked building sandcastles. Phillip hadn’t really built them, but he had watched and occasionally helped pack sand or dig moats when she prodded him enough for help. He didn’t think that counted. He hadn’t wanted to, or taken it upon himself to do, or actually finished one since he was a child. This would be his first.

Phillip didn’t make a sandcastle. He made a sand pyramid. Some people probably would call all structures in the sand, sandcastles. Not Phillip. He decided to make sure to file this memory away as a sand pyramid. He wasn’t sure why that was important, but he wanted the distinction made.

Soon the sun began to set and several bonfire pits opened up. He didn’t know why people would leave just when the real show was about to begin, but he didn’t ask. He didn’t want to risk inspiring them to change their minds.

He gathered his supplies and was about to leave behind his works of sand art. He hadn’t meant to start them in the first place, so he was surprised when he felt a little odd about leaving them behind. It wasn’t that he had built something spectacular; it was that he had done the opposite. He had started and failed to finish them – two vast and trunkless legs – standing in the sand next to his sand pyramid. He wasn’t sure why he started that, but figured he had seen some picture somewhere of something in Egypt that had a statue of some god or pharaoh standing before his pyramid.

Looking at the unfinished, abandoned legs, he felt a little sick and sad. They were out of place and were broken reminders of what should have been there and what the beach used to mean to him. It had been his favorite place in the city and he had shared it. But when things changed and ended it gave new meaning to everything that he had ever shared. Everything was different. Everything was less. Nothing held the same joy or value or potential.

Phillip felt like he was the two unfinished legs. There he was on the beach, standing in sand, empty and unfinished. He was the remnants of something great that had come before and had been lost forevermore.

Suddenly he wanted to kick down the pyramid and the legs. He wanted to destroy them and hope the pain went away and the hole filled in. He was sad and angry and lost all at the same time.

He left. Without watching the sunset. Without building a bonfire. He left. He couldn’t stand to be there anymore as time moved on but he didn’t. He couldn’t be in the past anymore.

So he left.

And he left the pyramid and unfinished legs behind as they were, as some sort of reminder to himself that the past, no matter how wrecked, could be left.