Sandcastles

Our youngest daughter wants to be a princess when she grows up.

Truly.

If you ask her what she wants to be, she’ll lean in close, look you right in the eye and with a look of enchantment, she’ll say, quite simply, “a princess.”

We know we could explain to her that real princesses are born into that role . . . that neither of her parents descends from royal bloodlines. But why spoil her dream?

I grew up in a coastal town . . . a hop, skip and a jump away from the neighboring island which has grown into a resort community. Access to the island was a high-rise bridge on the west end and a draw-bridge on the east. 21 miles separated the two bridges. The island road was narrow and bumpy and white oaks, shaped by years of ocean breezes, grew on either side. In some places, they almost touched overhead. As a little girl, about the age of our Princess, I used to love riding on the island. There was a small town on each end and an eclectic old fishing village in the middle and I would imagine the “tunnels” in between to be secret passages.

Time has changed the island. The road is a lot wider now. There aren’t so many white oaks. The draw-bridge on the east end of the island gave way years ago to another high-rise. Fishing piers are being replaced by fishing boats too large to haul home, so the owners store them in dry-stack marinas. The occasional tacky souvenir shop of then has turned into scads of boutiques. Where sand dunes once protected the island from wind and waves, there are now walls of hotels and condos. The small beach cottages which used to be the perfect beach get-away are now hidden among the masses of three- and four-story, multi-million dollar sandcastles . . . with pools.

The change is not all-together good or bad . . . just different.

We spent this past week visiting my Mom. During the week, we made several trips up and down the island, and each time, I noticed something new.

My favorite discovery was an old trailer park.

Now, I know, there’s no way to make a trailer park as enticing as those enormous, tropical-colored mansions across the street – the ones whose shadows mingle among the trailers in the afternoon sun. But what I noticed is that some of the trailers have been given a face-lift with fresh paint . . . the colors of the islands. It’s as if the shadows of the big giants have reached across and shared some of their glory with the singlewides.

Would I spend a week or two enjoying life at the beach in one of those big homes . . . choosing whether to sun in the sand or by the pool? You bet! Deep down, I think there’s a small part of all of us that craves a life of luxury . . . even if it’s only for a little while.

But my hope is that we can teach our children a sense of balance . . . that in the midst of having dreams and keeping them alive, they can also find contentment and peace within their present lives.

Understanding that their sandcastle may be big or it may be small, but they can still choose to paint it a beautiful color . . . and that their pool may simply be a tidal pool on the shore, but it can still be enjoyed.

Photo: Chateauneuf-en-Auxois Castle, Burgundy Region, France.

Artifacts

Shards from a pottery bowl.

Shards glued together.

Old button the Boy found.

Digging Up The Past

We've been spending some time at a nearby archaeological dig over the past few weeks. It's not a dinosaur dig . . . or a classical archaeological dig, but it's exciting, nonetheless.

The dig is the site of a local Presbyterian minister, David Caldwell (1725-1824), who also started an academy for young men. He was a devoted husband and father. He doctored the sick and wounded British and American soldiers after the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. He was a farmer. And as a statesman, he served at local, state and national levels. David Caldwell was obviously an outstanding leader and role-model for the people of his time . . . but also of our time.

The kids and I literally stumbled upon the dig a few weeks ago. We were having a picnic in this particular park. After our lunch, we were ambling around the park, reading the historic posts about David Caldwell and his "log cabin" academy. When our walk took us to the dig site, the archaeology team was just coming back from lunch.

"There's some helpers," the lead archaeologist, Ken Robinson, said to us as we approached.

I looked at them like they were crazy . . . I was sure this mother and her four children had been mistakenly recognized as a trained team of archaeologists.

"Come on over" he encouraged.

After seven years of homeschooling, I've learned that when someone is offering to help you literally use the world as your classroom, you don't ask questions . . . you put your bag down, roll up your sleeves, remind the children to behave and "dig in."

So far, we've been back four times . . . and we'll certainly be back again

Photo: Sieving at the David Caldwell dig.

The Garden Variety

We have a garden.

Two 4 x 8 raised beds that the Big Guy built when I announced that we were planting a garden this year. I was just thinking about digging a place in the ground . . . but it's hard to do that with clay and rocks. The beds are beautiful and both have rims around them which double as benches.

Arguably, it's the first garden we've had since having children.

I say arguably because the children planted a couple of tomatoes and peppers in the shade at the edge of our woods a couple of years ago. And when the Boy overhears me saying we have our first garden this year, he is very swift to correct my error of historical accuracy. We did enjoy a few tomatoes from that small shaded patch, so I suppose it was a garden by definition . . . and by experience.

When the Big Guy and I first got married, his job took us to Alabama . . . the town was teeny-tiny and was 13 hours from home. 13 hours from everything we had ever known. As far as we were concerned, we were in the middle of nowhere.

Our house was an old, old house with a big back yard. Our neighbors owned the local Feed & Seed and they invited us over for dinner one spring night. As we visited, we started talking about gardens. It didn't take long for me to decide that we should have a garden.

I asked Tommy if we could borrow his tiller. He grinned and said "yes."

I asked what kinds of seeds we should buy . . . and where we should plant them. Tommy grinned and answered all of my questions.

Tommy told me to come by the store the next day after school and he'd help me pick out the seeds. I was excited.

The next day crawled by. All I could think about was picking out our seeds, carrying them home in those pocket-sized brown paper sacks and planting them in our garden.

For some reason long forgotten, I needed to stop by the house on my way to the Feed & Seed. Our driveway ran the length of the house, hooked around and ended at the back porch. When I pulled to the end of the driveway, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Tommy was in our garden.

He had picked out the seeds, brought his tiller and fertilizer and had planted our garden for us. He was just finishing up when I came home. When he saw me, he grinned and waved.

I walked over and he explained what he'd done. He pointed out where our corn would be popping up and how the pole beans would use the corn stalks as support for their long sprawling vines. He showed me the mounds of earth that contained our squash and zucchini seeds. There were tomato plants and cucumbers, too.

I felt so blessed to have been put on that corner of the earth.

What Tommy did that day was one of the most neighborly things anyone has ever done for us.

Tommy and Jo were just regular people - the garden variety. But they are the Gold Standard to which I measure good-neighborliness. Each time I go out to our garden, I think of them. I think of how much they taught us in the 10 months that we were neighbors . . . and I miss that we didn't get to spend more time with them.

Photo: Sugar Peas from our garden.