My son and I had a thing for Sand Dollars, a personal attachment, I guess you could say. There was a particular beach we visited all the time, mostly when he was younger. Not a very big beach, but there were lots of big rocks to go exploring around, especially during low tide. So many little tide pools to find crabs and driftwood from “sunken pirate ships,” and seashells—all prized possessions to a little kid.
We’d get there super early—sometimes so early, we were the only ones on the beach. By the time the afternoon crowds arrived, we’d already been there for a good five hours and were ready to leave.
On one of these exploring days, we found a sand dollar… then another, and another. It seemed like once we knew what to look for in the sand ripples, they were everywhere. We had a big beach pail filled with water, and we started dropping them into it, along with a couple of other little critters.
There was a woman who noticed what we were doing, and she was not particularly happy. I wouldn’t say she was aggressive, but she was definitely upset and passionately firm in her stance that these were living sea creatures, and we should not be doing what we were doing! I hadn’t really considered that, and maybe she thought we were planning to take them home. I was polite and assured her we would return them to the wet sand and water… and we did.
With the exception of one.
And that one has been sitting in my memory box for years. Mario was maybe 8 years old at the time.
My memory box is filled with little keepsakes, and from time to time, we’d go through the treasures and reminisce. He loved to tell the Sand Dollar story. Even at 25, he was still telling it. He tended to embellish, and the story seemed to grow each time he told it. Over the years, the stranger on the beach became this long-toothed, crazed woman who was verbally assaulting his mother when she was just trying to have a fun day with her kid—and I became a bigger and bigger superhero for remaining calm and not “clocking her.” His words, not mine. His version of the story had her toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose with me, yelling in my face… which is not quite what I recall.
On Mother’s Day this year, I went to that beach with some of his ashes. I wanted to go alone—just the two of us, like it always was. It was raining on and off that morning, and I saw only two other people on the beach. It was peaceful.
I let his ashes go, then walked along the sand and scrambled among the boulders, just like we used to, then I stood in the low tide for a few minutes, reminiscing and thinking about the Sand Dollar day. I looked down into the water, trying to recapture the memory, and right at my feet, there was that familiar impression in the sand ripple.
Sure enough, I picked up a Sand Dollar.
And then I put it back.
In my heart, I could hear him egging me on, “Ma, just take it!”
And so I did.
I felt like it was his gift to me on that day, being Mother’s Day.
I’d always tell him that I was his biggest fan. No matter what’s happening—no matter what, period—I’ll always be your biggest fan.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that Sand Dollar story, and it occurs to me now that it really worked both ways.
He was my biggest fan, too.
