Sand

“I’ve made that sandcastle, what will I do now?” The little boy was standing in front of his Mammy, his feet covered in the sand of Blackpool beach. He didn’t like this sand at all, and he had never been to the beach before. Sitting in this horrible grit was no fun for him, and there was nothing to do. “Make a sandcastle,” his mother had told him, so he had dutifully done so. But that was it, end of story. Nothing more to do.

His mother often laughed at the memory of it. “That was the one year we didn’t go back to Ireland,” she told her son. ‘We thought we’d do the Lancashire thing and go for a few days to Blackpool and spend the days on the beach. You hated it,” she added. “My own son hates it now,” he’d replied. “Can’t stand sand between his toes.”

Now, he thinks to himself, the sands of time are running out for his mother. She has lived to a grand old age. Soon she will be ninety-four. The hourglass full of sand is nearly run its course, and time, like sand, has run through our fingers.

“I had to sit up in the kitchen all evening, just in case I was needed to bring more tea, or coal for the fire,” Mammy told him. “That was after a long day’s work that began at six in the morning, making fires in the guests rooms, and cleaning the house and preparing meals. The lady would come along, maybe at nine or ten o’clock and say, ‘You can go to bed now, Eileen’.”

Those were the days that she had worked as a domestic servant in Manchester before the war, a young girl over from the West of Ireland, ‘In service”, as they called it. She got a few hours off on a Wednesday afternoon. That was all.

The man she married knew a lot about sand, because he spent some time fighting Mr Rommel all across the sands of North Africa. He was one of the “Desert Rats” as they became known, and he fought against the men of the “Afrika Corps”. The names of Tobruk and El Alamein and “Hell Fire Pass” became household names for the boy who hated sand, when, in later years, his father told him the stories. And he always spoke well of Rommel.

Sand was only good for jumping into, the boy thought. When he was eleven years old he jumped fourteen feet in the school long jump. Mr Lavin, his teacher was very impressed and had to measure the distance twice before he was sure of what he saw.

After a love affair and a broken heart, he walked for hours on Formby beach. It was miles of endless sand, and no help at all. This experience was repeated many times on other beaches in Ireland, looking out to the western horizon, knowing that no help or healing could be found. Sand was only desert.
But one day he did walk on a beach with a girl and with a happy heart and sand was re-instated. All was forgiven. Now when he thinks of a glorious day, he thinks of the beach at Keem, on the far tip of Achill Island, and he smiles.

Who couldn’t love the seaside? The air is so fresh and invigorating, the views are forever, the water warm and inviting, the sun always shining. It is the edge of the world, the place for rejoicing, for looking into the future. The little boy loves to see the sea and to go down to the beach.

Just don’t ask him to bring a bucket and spade