SEA CHANGE

By Liz J. Andersen

 

 

            I don't recall how old I was when I fought the sea.  I just know I was old enough to understand the impossibility of saving my sand castle from high tide, but still young enough to cry over it.  So why don't I even remember making the castle?

            Did I sculpt it by hand, or did we bring a day-glow plastic toy bucket and trowel to Pajaro Dunes?  Mom packed our vacation essentials, but all I remember adding was one of my dad's faded canvas army satchels, stuffed with science fiction paperbacks and ocean science books, a magnifying glass, opera glasses, a notebook, and plenty of black Bic pens.

            With this kit I felt ready for anything, from an impromptu natural science lecture to the sudden rush of a story idea.  I shyly explained to complete strangers why they must leave tide pool shells for the hermit crabs.  And I'd inherited the itch to write from both sides of my family.

            But this bit proves my ocean memories have crashed together, because Pajaro Dunes provided nearly anything a kid could ask for, except tide pools.  I spent all day beachcombing, wading, running, observing, pedaling paddle boats on the tide-driven slough, or rusty community bikes on the sandy boardwalks.  If I snagged the two-seater, I gave my two younger sisters wild rides while they shrieked with nervous laughter.

            Before horses were banned, I even survived a bumpy gallop up and down the dunes, and the humiliation of returning to the stables on an unruly rental mount.  The mostly vacant Community Center also offered a free jukebox, so I could play Ennio Morricone's "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" over and over, without anyone caring.  I also met a nasty girl there who taught me Spit, a wicked card game.

            At sunset my family returned to a rattan-furnished, driftwood-colored rental beach house, where we munched on Ruffles potato chips with onion dip, and 7-Up or even Coca Cola rare treats before supper.  Or mom cooked up fist-sized fresh clams in butter and garlic, caught at low tide by chasing bubbles in the sand with our shovels.  So someone brought shovels.

            Perhaps I created my sand castle the evening before the Pacific Ocean took it back, at the end of a day not distinctive enough to remember.  Many of my vacation memories are sensual rather than sequential.

            I savored moist, fishy, salty breezes.  I waded into squishy, burping, fetid slough mud as precarious as quicksand, and raced icy Pacific waves.  Seagull cries periodically pierced the nonstop booming of the breakers.  And my bare feet experienced all the unnamed forms of sand.

            First I bounded with carefully rounded feet on the gritty, splintery, greying boardwalks.  Then I leaped off and dodged rough-edged dune grass.  I skidded down powdery sand to make it whistle softly under my feet.  Next came a rough hot dry slog, and occasionally a delightfully crunchy layer, like a flaky pie crust, a gift from high tide.

            Finally my feet recovered on smooth cold wet sand, stretching towards the horizon under thin, clear, criss-crossing sea layers at low tide.  Rough waves at high tide hurled up mostly broken shells and sand dollars, colorful sand-blasted sea glass and pebbles, fishy crab segments, and alien clumps of seaweed.  Then the waves quickly snatched it all back—so I had to pick and grab fast.

            Of course, some of it wasn't treasure.  But my mom had us gather all the beach garbage one day to build a scarecrow, which actually made people speechless when they stopped to stare at it, in the days before "Reduce, Re-use, and Recycle."

            When work kept him during the week, dad at least came for the weekends, ending our all-girl parties.  But I didn't mind, especially since I wasn't really a girl.

            People called me a tomboy, but I preferred to think of myself as a Neutral, back in those sadly black and white days.  I wasn't eager to grow up into my mother's heavy, lumpy body, nor did I want what boys hid in their pants.  I did want my red hair cut short, and I envied boy's pocket-rich clothes, fast sneakers, and adventure toys, but I knew without asking that I couldn't have most of that.

            So I settled for small victories, like the books I bought for myself, my homemade science kit, and building in sand since I dared not ask for an Erector Set.

            I believe I was proud of my castle.  Maybe I even returned to it because I planned to show it off to my parents.  But all memory gives me is a furious attempt to enlarge a hopeless drainage moat, while my creation melted away under the relentless high-tide onslaught of cold foamy waves.  Meanwhile my parents wandered right past me in a cheerful haze.  I couldn't get them to help me, nor did they offer any sympathy, or even a gentle lesson about futility.

            Maybe they really didn't notice the salt water streaming from my green eyes or hear my sobs over the crashing breakers.  And for years I couldn't put into words why I couldn't dam the flow of an ocean of pain that poured into my soul that day, a pain well beyond the loss of a sand castle I can't even remember building.  For I didn't understand that with my dad's arrival came different holiday drinks, adult drinks.

            Most children must learn they are not the center of the universe.  But my lesson carried me out to sea like a rip tide, as if I was mere flotsam.  Actually I didn't matter anymore—at least not as much as alcohol addiction— which would gradually turn me into an invisible orphan with pseudo-parents.

            But as you will see, I gradually fought my way back to shore by writing a science fiction novel about ecology students, all orphans who must learn how to save themselves and their planets, in Some of My Best Friends Are Humans.  And I earned two science degrees which freed me from my gender trap and my parents' house.

            I am much honored to say you can find my book at the Eugene Public Library.