Sand In Our Shoes

When a scene or a smell brings a memory, it can arrive as suddenly as a slap on the cheek.    

Traveling east with the undertow, the dolphins rose out of the ocean in a ballet set to the music of wind with rhythm added by waves rolling and slapping the shore.  It was dusk.  Still a couple of hours before moonrise but the sun was slipping below the western horizon.  Another cycle turned as daylight gave dominion of the sky over to darkness and the sea tide rose to salute the moon in the east.  Twenty two minutes after high tide the first arc of moonlight broke the horizon.  A red-orange ball obscured by ragged streaks across rose to awe-filled eyes. 

In the hours between dolphins jumping until the moon burned bright 25 degrees above the horizon, the cycles of days replayed. 

Sam Paul once told me that if you let the sand from the Sandhills region of North Carolina get in your shoes, you’ll never be able to shake it out.  That sand makes you as much a part of the land as every tree or person and it will keep bringing you back from far-away places.  Sam was prophetic.  Our little family moved back to Missouri thirty-five years ago but when the full moon was about to rise, our family, now ten of us, were there.  We watched together from a beach in the southeastern tip of North Carolina for the moon’s glimmering entrance above a calm Atlantic Ocean.

When we lived here our children were young.  I was part of a company who had been attracted to town for its great local workforce and for its strategic location to receive and ship our materials and products.  While I never thought it was necessary, we employed a guard service at our plant and I received a report each morning of the overnight events.  One morning the report read, “Saw a snake.  Shot at it six times.  Killed it with a stick.”  We kept the guard service but got rid of the guns.  The guards each brought offerings of butter beans, okra and field peas for weeks after and the Sandhills flavors still call to me often.

People here welcomed us as friends.  Around here, “friend” is a word that carries commitment and spans time.  The evidence of that is written on the faces and in the hugs from everyone who greets us as though we’d never left.  The children who played with our children – all now have children of their own.  This new generation of tar-heeled kids have brought our grandchildren into that group of people who have the sand from this region permanently in their shoes.  Actually, some of this beach sand from their first trip here is still in their shoes, ears, swimming suits, and in the cars we rode home. 

It takes no imagination to look at this group of grandchildren at play to see our own children from decades ago.  Whether it was putting lipstick on the only little boy of the brood, organizing a parade to wind around the Woodrun loop or producing a musical play to run for the audience of conscripted parents, children were in constant motion.  One such parade was meant to celebrate the 4^th of July.   Bandit, the St. Bernard, was cast as the horse to pull the wagon but just as the parade was about to begin, he decided it was time for a quick swim.  He was back in a flash shaking and displaying his costume of algae and pine straw and his flag bandanna.  The costumes and flags adorned every float and the hats or hair of the marching kazoos.  We laughed then – we laugh harder now. 

The games kids play have changed but the constant motion has not.  The toys of childhood may be mileposts of each generation but using the toys in creative ways is the definition of childhood.  Making parents cringe and grandparents roar with belly laughs can only be done through the artistic antics of kids. 

The anticipation that rises before every return to this place and these people confirms Sam Paul’s wisdom.  This sand is in our shoes.  Returning to this place is as comfortable as well-worn jeans.  Time here is filled with laughter and memories of trips and other childhoods.  Each visit is a time for making new memories that will be the source of stories and laughter when the sand in our shoes brings us back. 

Returning is a cycle as sure as the full moon rising to light the dark and glisten the rippling sea.

--td