A lost journal entry.

Five years ago, my family lived two blocks from the ocean. During the spring and summer months we visited the beach often. The thundering waves, curling over and foaming up the shore, inevitably drew us to them. My brother and I spent hours collecting tiny crabs in buckets, watching them crawl over and under each other, marveling at how they could be so little and yet qualify as real crabs, when in reality they looked like miniature spiders. Then, as the sun slid higher in the sky and the day grew warmer, we would stand in the shallows with our heads in the water, wearing our goggles and breathing shakily through our snorkels that we hadn’t quite mastered the use of yet, spitting out the salty water that entered when we least expected it. We watched the fish swim against the currents, struggling as the waves threatened to suck them back out to the wide ocean, and were careful not to get in the way of stray jellyfish. Later, when the sun baked the water and its occupants, we climbed on the huge rocks that formed our pier. We examined the limpets that stuck to the rocks, waiting for the tide to rise yet again and contest their right to remain there, poked and wondered at the starfish, and laughed at and threw back the unfortunate jellyfish left behind by the tide when it had run out. When the sun started to slide away, we had contests to see who could bounce rocks the farthest and highest. We took little rocks and threw them as hard as we could against the other, larger rocks that sprouted from the ground all around us. We watched, holding our breath, as they flew in the air, bouncing from first one rock and then another, sometimes smashing and breaking at the slightest touch and sometimes bouncing over 20 times, each one more triumphant than the last, looking for all the world like crazy popcorn, gone wild at last. Then, when the sun was almost entirely gone, we watched the glorious sunset from the still-warm rocks. The sun streaked the sky with careless fingers, turning it deep reds, oranges, pinks and purples, and left the sky in a final fanfare of deep blues, turning it over to the bright, cold moon. As we poured out our buckets of crabs, shells and seaweed, we regretfully left the beach, and begged our parents to let us come the next day.