Friday, February 26, 2010

Guilty Conscience

I couldn't stand it that I cheaped out last night and didn't write. "Ooh, I was tired." So I tucked my notebook and yesterday's calendar page into my backpack before work. This afternoon I found a few minutes, well, more than a few minutes, and got to work.

February 25--Kawailoa Bay, Kauai, Hawaii. Sam and Buster loved the beach. They ran in the sand, rolled in it, so they got it in their hair, brought drifts of it home in their pockets. Sometimes their mom thought they only went into the ocean to get wet so that more sand would stick to them. Sam thought he lived in the perfect place. It was warm almost all the time in Kauai and it was usually sunny too. Sam thought that everyone lived in a place like that until Buster came to live with them. Buster used to live on the mainland with his mom who was Sam's aunt, but Buster's mom got cancer and was real sick and she died. At first when he came to Kauai, Buster just wanted to sit in the house but Sam kept pestering him and pulling him to go to the beach. Buster only knew about swimming pools and sandboxes because he used to live in Wisconsin where it was only warm for a few months of the year. He had followed Sam down the path to the beach, grousing all the way about how he didn't see what was so great about a pile of sand, but when they got there his mouth dropped open. It really did, just like they say in books. Buster let out a wild whoop and started to run. He chased gulls and he chased Sam. He ran and ran. Sam's mom saw that there were tear tracks on his pink and sandy cheeks. "Sand gets in my eyes too," she said as she wiped his face with a cool cloth and smoothed on sunscreen.

That's better. Conscience assuaged.
--Barbara

No comments: