The Taste of Happiness
It smelled of salt, and it looked like I was watching a picture move before my eyes.
The blue wasn't what I thought it would be. I imagined something crystal clear, like they had shown in the movies, but instead it was a dirty brown blue that appeared more majestic than anything I had ever seen.
Ocean grass rode the waves into shore, and it smelled like rotten eggs. I hate eggs, but I loved the sand, especially when the tide turned it into muck between my fingers. It was the most relaxed feeling I had ever felt. Sand to muck; feeling something change its form in your hands.
The sun was merciless, but castles never built themselves.
Purple pails and green shovels,
With yellow plastic bricks,
And a little blue boat,
With pretend crocodiles,
To keep out any intruders;
My sister and I began to build our sand empire when the waves crashed our front wall and destroyed it.
I freaked out as if it was the end of days and destroyed the rest of the castle, because it was my creation to destroy, and not the intruding ocean's.
We were too close to the rising tide, and had to rebuild further behind us.
Mother wanted us lathered in sun tan lotion, but I loved peeling my skin, because it made me feel like a snake, so when my mother started putting some on my sister is when I made a mad dash to the ocean in my attempts to at least have some snake skin on my shoulders.
As I ran back to rebuild our sand castle I noticed that some of my moms' friends were helping my sister rebuild our empire.
So I grabbed a pail and immediately went to go grab more muck because I wanted to make a watch tower and needed a mixture of both muck and sand to create my favorite place in the castle. As I was heading towards the waves I began to notice the other children playing in the ocean and wading in the waves on their life jackets with their parents. I stopped in the middle of the beach to watch them.
A bunch of families and people were all over this beach, but I found myself concentrated on this one. The water from my short hair was dripping on my shoulders, but I didn't even budge. I just remember thinking of how beautiful of a family they were, and how they all seemed so happy. There were voices everywhere, but I could pinpoint their laughter immediately. It was just a beautiful moment to see and understand happiness.
The daze broke, and I continued to run to the shoreline with the pail swinging in my hands. I grabbed the muck and made my way to the builders of the castle to dump my muck in my little area, but I was distracted. I wanted to be in the waves, so I asked my mom and fellow builders if we could go play in them and they said something along the lines of, "After we build the castle," or, "Not right now, honey, maybe later".
But, later didn't work for me, so I took a hard look at the muck and then at the waves and made a run for it. I could hear my mother yelling in the background to be careful as I hit the water and ran as far as i could until I couldn't any longer and then pressed my feet into the muck to wait to hop into the waves.
They tasted like salt, because I was too excited to keep my mouth closed that I swallowed the ocean in every wave, and it was happiness. It was perfect joy.
I learned that sometimes you have to make happiness for yourself by yourself. Every time I feel that little kid perfect joy again, I get a taste of salt in the back of my throat.