.....sand castles and twizzlers

Yogis,
I was only 26 years old the first time I went. With a four-year-old son in tow and another nestled inside me, I fell in love with the Outer Banks. A few hours ago, I arrived home from my thirty first visit. Thirty one consecutive end of July’s spent on the same block and same stretch of beach, with the same crowd of friends.

This year my youngest son is 26. There is nothing like an annual tradition to view time through.

For the first many years there was always one of us pregnant or nursing an infant under the shade of an umbrella. Followed then by summers filled with toddlers, boogie boards, giant sand castles and twizzlers. Trips to urgent care sprinkled in and searching for ghost crabs on the beach at night. During those years our ‘adult’ cocktail party, a single break away from the kids, brought out the teenager in all of us….which we paid for dearly early the next morning.

Years become a blur and suddenly the toddlers are teenagers and we are now the ones nervously keeping tabs on them and the beer refrigerator, kept awake by their card games, music and late night bowls of cereal. Only truly resting when we hear them close their bedroom doors. Informing them that they are now responsible for making their own sandwiches and carrying their own chairs.

This year there were six of the sweetest little girls in our circle, daughters of some of those very same teenagers, building sand castles and eating sand covered twizzlers. Three more babies will enter the world and our group by the time we return. The ‘kid’ picture taking on a new meaning. Watching others doing what we ourselves have done and wondering where the time has gone.

The wild shrubbery has grown taller on the street. So much so that our view of the ocean between the houses in front of us is partially blocked. The bird sanctuary land next to our street where the boys played and deer wandered is now filled with 6 bedroom homes. The dunes continue their skyward growth and every couple of years new taller steps get built directly above the old ones.

Yet some things have not been touched by time. The pulsating drone of the cicadas which fills the hot air as we arrive. Pelicans flying in formation over our heads. Incredible skies and seemingly infinite stars. Our laughter.

As I pulled out of the neighborhood and onto route 12 to head home in the quiet of the early morning the rising sun shone into the car over my left shoulder. For a split second I felt the exact same way I have every single year at that moment when I make the turn. Yes, it has been 31 years but there is that part of me that also remains untouched by time. The part that has witnessed this inevitable yet beautiful passage of time.

I still eat twizzlers,
SARAH