Sand and Water

When things get old and decay, they often harden and turn into sand like grains of dust. During a recent house cleaning I witnessed this dust flung into the air with a sunlit backdrop while shaking out a blanket. The sunlight illuminated a cloud of tiny crystal particles shimmering in the air. I just watched it as it slowly floated to the ground. I reached out and caught a handful of it and it sat in the palm of my hand as I turned my hand in the sun and looked at it.

What was that really? Pieces of my life, now just dust. Except if you look at it in the light. Ah, then those pieces are crystals. I took what I couldn't see in ordinary light and put it in a box of tiny little silver angels that I think were once used to cushion something that was once in the box. And although I can't retrieve a solitary piece of it; together I have it all in the box. Anytime I want I can take the box and hold it and think about those little crystals of life.

There is that crystal that shines back at me from that day in 1974 when my son caught a big toad in the backyard. He was so thrilled with that ugly thing, he ran all around the yard with it and I ran in and got the camera. I have a picture someplace, but I haven't seen it in years. But the memory of that day is right there in my crystal box.

Another crystal brings back a happy day at Capitola beach at River's edge where my 15 month old daughter sat with her blue bonnet and nothing more, making sand cakes and stacking them all around her. I didn't have my camera with me, so I only have the memory of that day. She played for hours right there, happy as could be, scooping up water and sand, dripping about as much on her as ended up on those cakes. When she was finished she stood up and took a couple steps into the water, then turned around and smashed all the cakes with her feet and with squeals of laughter as the sand made its way through her toes.


Two decades or so before that, I have the many crystal memories on that same beach when I was a child. My mother didn't like the water so she sat under a big umbrella next to the swings in one of those striped canvas back half chairs as I ran in and out of that same river water. I was skinny and got cold real fast, and would run out of the water and my mother would wrap me in a sun warmed quilt until my goose bumps went away. Then back in the water I went. I think of all those days my mother and my little brother and I walked down the 88 stairs behind the Capitola theatre and along the Esplande to the beach carrying the necessary gear for a day at the beach. Then at the end of a long day, we walked all the way back up that hill, past the train depot to our house on Saxon Avenue with sand in our bathing suits.

All alone I didn't like the feeling
All alone I sat and cried
All alone I had to find some meaning
In the center of the pain I felt inside

All alone I came into this world
All alone I will someday die
Solid stone is just sand and water, baby
Sand and water, and a million years gone by

I will see you in the light of a thousand suns
I will hear you in the sound of the waves
I will know you when I come, as we all will come
Through the doors beyond the grave

All alone I heal this heart of sorrow
All alone I raise this child
Flesh and bone, he's just
Bursting towards tomorrow
And his laughter fills my world and wears your smile

I will see you in the light of a thousand suns
I will hear you in the sound of the waves
I will know you when I come, as we all will come
Through the doors beyond the grave

All alone I came into this world
All alone I will someday die
Solid stone is just sand and water, baby
Sand and water and a million years gone by

Songwriter - Beth Nielsen Chapman