(11th Consecutive Post!)
(Disclaimer: I am probably not quoting anyone here. These are the events of the day as my brain tells me they happened. So if I mess anything up, please don’t take it personally.)
Today, Owen, mom and I went to the beach with K and A.
When we got there, they weren’t there yet, so me and Owen played in the waves for a while until Owen said, “Hey, there’s K and A.” (He used their actual names)
I said hi to K, and A and I immediately began the whole “purple cabbage”, “marshmallow socks” exchange. We played in the waves for a while; I discovered that I could throw my legs back and wait for the next wave to throw me in a backwards somersault. I spent a lot of time hugging my knees to my chest and being tossed around by the waves, and K and A did a lot of wrestling; they like to wrestle in the water and see who can push whose head under.
Eventually, we got out of the search of a drink (all of us) and some food (me).
I desperately needed some water, seeing as the last wave had forced the ocean down my throat. I gulped the ice-cold water from our canteen down, but everything would taste like salt for a while afterward. I think I was still eating some of my salmon salad when A asked me, “Hey, do you want to take a walk?”
“In which direction?” I asked.
“Down that way.” She pointed to the stretch of shore to the left of our little camp.
She and K told me about a “lagoon” they had found years ago that was really fun. I had never seen an actual lagoon before, so I was all for it. They said it was a long way away, but I really wanted to see the lagoon. So we set off.
As we were walking, we came upon a giant heap of mussels; and I mean really, it was huge! Bigger than I’ve seen, anyway. We poked around in it and found some nice shells, and a ladybug. It stuck to A’s finger. “Aww, it loves you!” I said.
“Get it off.” A said. I scraped it off with a shell. “pooping on me is not a sign of love.”
Apparently, the ladybug had pooped on her. A little further down, we found a dead ladybug. A dug a hole, and we buried it. We said a few words, (a bit jokingly, I’ll admit) and put a little gravestone (a mussel) and an epithet (a piece of seaweed) over the grave. Then we sang Amazing Grace.
This actually happened a lot throughout our trip.
Somewhere near the lagoon was a long jetty of rocks and concrete, and we walked along it looking at tidal pools. Hiding in one of the rocks next to the ocean I saw a little tidal pool. I tried to climb down to it, but A warned me not to. It was dangerous, she said. I sighed and got back to my feet. There would be more tidal pools, anyway.
There were, actually. There was one so full of algae it was like a carpet. There was an American flag on the end of the jetty, and we turned back a few feet from that.
Soon we got to a point where we could see the lagoon. It was a big puddle, (more that than a small lagoon) pouring in from between the rocks, just on the other side of which was the ocean. It was situated in sort of an inside-out cove. Farther up the shore and away from the lagoon was a pile of planks and driftwood laying against the cliff. While we were walking to it, K and A told me about an injured seagull they had rescued called “Sandy’. Apparently they had managed to touch her.
We stepped through the lagoon. K told me that the lagoon used to be a lot bigger, and sometimes it would even stretch toward the pile of wood, but they hadn’t seen it that big in years.
We found ourselves sitting in a little pool between four or five rocks. K found a dead crab there.
I looked under one of the rocks and saw that it formed a little sea cave. “Hey!” I said. “A sea cave.”
K looked in my direction. “yeah.” She said. “A little too small for us though.”
“Wouldn’t it be cool if we were really small?” I said. “And we could hide under there?”
And so a story was born. Me and A and K kept going back and forth, adding to the story, until we came up with an entire trilogy. “Wow!” I said when we were done. “We should totally write that!”
“Yeah!” K and A agreed.
After that, we went up to the pile of wood and poked around a bit. There was this piece of concrete covered in colored, rubber mock-asphalt. You know, the stuff they pave some playgrounds with so kids don’t get hurt too much when they fall. They called it the “rainbow road”.
We started on our way home, and at the mouth of the sand-cove A found a dead rat/mouse. It was small for a rat but big for a mouse. “We have to bury it.” I said. A poked it with a stick, and it accidently brushed her hand, so she washed her hand off in the lagoon while we dug a hole for her. The rat/mouse, not A. we named her Mrs. Thisby. When A came back, we had buried Mrs. Thisby and put a grave marker (a stick) at her head. I said a few words, and we all sang Amazing Grace. Or, the first verse, anyway. I put some stalks of dried kelp at her head, and we walked back to where we were set up. A few times K and A thought they saw Sandy, but each candidate flew away when chased.
When we got back, A and K’s moms had arrived. They were sitting in the two green chairs A and K had brought. I had a long drink of water, and we told everyone about the lagoon, and the rat, and how we thought we saw Sandy a few times. A and K’s mom told me that she had told the girls that if they could catch or touch a seagull, she would give them a hundred dollars. She now owes them a hundred dollars.
We made plans to take Owen back to the lagoon with us, and mom said alright, but she didn’t want us gone for more than an hour.
“An hour?’ I said. “We won’t be gone that long.” That’s when she told me that, the last time we went to the lagoon, we had been gone for two hours.
“That’s why you were so thirsty!” mom said.
A and K’s mom told us that we had about forty-five minutes until the lifeguards left, so if we wanted to swim, we should do it now and then go to the lagoon. And then Owen told us about the fish.
Apparently, Owen had discovered little, striped fish swimming around near the shore. And apparently, they were everywhere. We waded out with him to see. They were so ubiquitous, you could even see them from the surface. They were everywhere! “I wish I had brought my mask.” I remarked to K.
“Go get it!” she said. “They’re everywhere, it’s really cool!”
So I trudged back to where we had set up and got my mask. As soon as I put it on, I saw what they meant. Little, flat-ish silver fish, with vertical black stripes and black spots on their heads, swimming around everywhere, just out of reach of curious fingers. We spent a long time trying to catch them or touch them, coming up only for air. I discovered that I could stay upside-down longer by windmilling my arms. I almost touched them a few times; almost. K brought out her snorkel and swam around like that for a while. Soon, though, the lifeguards left, and it was time to come out of the water.
Now we could go to the lagoon.
K had to make a sandball first, though. She packed wet sand into a little ball, then added dry sand around the edges to make it bigger and bigger. We named it “Harvey-Joe”. I think she was almost done when a chunk of sand fell out of its side. “Noooo!” K said dramatically. “Harvey-Joe!”
“Well,” I said. “He has a mouth now.”
“Yeah.” Said K. “Now he needs two little eyes…” she tried to poke eyes above the mouth, but only succeeded in prodding more sand off the overall ball. “Nooo!” she said again. She packed wet sand into the mouth.
At this point, A came over. “Where’s the other ball?” she asked.
“This is the same one.” K said.
“Good.”
K was, once again, nearly finished when a chunk of sand fell out of its side.
“Nooo!” she screamed again. “Oh, whatever.” She said, and threw Harvey-Joe into the ocean.
“NOOOO!” we screamed together, and we ran to the spot where he had landed.
“I killed Harvey-Joe!’ K said. It was all very dramatic.
Now that Harvey-Joe was out of the way, we started on our way toward the lagoon. We ran, so that we would have as much time as we could to play there. Mom had said that if we weren’t back in forty-five minutes she’d come to check on us.
K was running really fast, so the rest of us were, inevitably, left behind a few times. When we made it there, we were in for a surprise: the lagoon had grown.
The lagoon was now only about ten or fifteen feet from the pile of wood, and was more of a very small lagoon than a big puddle. “OMIGOSH!” everyone (except Owen) shouted, and we all ran to the lagoon. “This is amazing!” I said. “It must be the tide!”
There were big logs floating around in the lagoon, and near the shore, and in the lagoon was something of a raft; a small deck of sorts that must have been used atop a ship or in a warehouse, to place boxes or crates on top of. A and Owen tried to float on it like a raft, to no avail.
Why not do our yoga in the lagoon, I suggested to K, and she agreed.
We did our routine about half a foot into the water. Owen and A had discovered how to float on the “raft” and they were harassing us with its pointy edges, but nonetheless we managed to get through the routine. We added goddess pose to the mix as well.
At the end of our routine, we lay down at the shore and breathed deeply for a while, and then the routine was over. We spent the rest of our time swimming around in the lagoon.
K found a place where you could wedge yourself in between the rocks, and it functioned as sort of a crude, natural ergonomic bench. It was very comfortable, except for the onslaught of waves from the other side of the rocks which forced us to hang on for dear life each time we heard the roar of the ocean. A and Owen wedged the “raft” in between a few rocks in the deep end of the lagoon and used it as a diving board. Or I guess “jumping board” would be more accurate, as the deepest the lagoon got was only about two and a half or three feet. I jumped off once and discovered it wasn’t for me, but A had great fun with it.
We were all sad when it was time to go. Our moms arrived forty-five or fifty minutes later, stayed for a bit, and then brought us back. On the way back we showed everyone Mrs. Thisby’s grave, and I found a plastic gorilla figurine on the shore. I offered it to A, and she took it, but gave it back to me on the grounds that “Its mouth is creepy.” I couldn’t argue with that.
Owen stopped at their house to go to the bathroom, and then we began the hour-long trip back to our house. Mom groaned as she looked at the radio clock.
“We won’t even have time to take showers by the time we get home.” She said.
When we got back, it was around 9:30 at night. We each took quick showers and went to bed. As I lay in my bed, I could still feel the sensation of ghost waves rocking me back and forth. Swaying in an imaginary ocean. If I pictured a big wave in my head, I would feel it too. My inner ear thought I was still in the ocean. I fell asleep being rocked by the waves.
Deleted Scene:
We were taking a break from the ocean, and I was eating some of my salmon salad, when A pulled from her bag a ziplock baggie of purple cabbage.
“Is that purple cabbage?” I asked.
“Yeah!” she said. “It’s really good.
“Can I try some?” I asked.
“Sure.” She handed me a piece. I took a bite and chewed, and there was no taste.
“ There’s no taste!” I exclaimed. I tried piling some of my salmon salad on top. I still couldn’t taste it.
“Maybe my mouth just tastes too much like salt water.”
(11th Consecutive Post!)
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