Low Tide

There is no trust tantamount to that of a small child, hurling her body into the ocean waves.

I was so sure the water would catch me, that I could leap, without a hint of inhibition, into its frigid arms. I remember dancing up and down the beach, laughing, catching crabs and cracked shells and showing them off to my parents who would tell me to put them back… for their own safety, and also so they wouldn’t find their way home with me in my pockets. I would already bring some of the beach home with me. Grains of sand caught in the crooks of my elbows and the bends of my knees were mandatory souvenirs from my Odyssey across the beach. I remember watching families and pets race up and down the beach and I ran with them along the shoreline as seagulls flew back and forth over our heads.

I remember seeing the dead bird, his white wings crumpled like a paper crane in clumsy hands. He lay in the wet sand and I stared. Emotions hit my chest, stopping me, a suffocating seatbelt when the momentum of the beach stopped, and I was held captive, trapped by the inertia of the bird at my feet. His beak was open. His tiny bones would soon be crushed to powder by the relentless tide.

I sat with him. I cried openly and shamelessly as only a child can do, salty tears mixing with the waves that tickled my feet. I remember curling my toes in the wet sand as I digested my first lesson in permanence.