Boys Meet Beach

On the day I moved to Hawaii, the neighbor girl came by to invite my daughter to go to the beach.

It sounded fun, but, "What beach are you going to?  How are you getting there? Who will you be going with?"

My daughter threw her hands up. "I don't know. You can talk to her if you like."

The neighbor girl seemed surprised that I had so many questions. I guess "going to the beach" is something the teenagers just do in Hawaii. They were going to Hukilau beach (I had no idea where that was), they were walking, and they would meet two other friends there.

Too many unknowns. This paranoid mother from the mainland had to go along, just for a little while, so I could check things out. And also because I was hot and tired from unpacking and wanted to see the beach.

When my boys heard about this expedition, they clamored to join up. I said we weren't going swimming. We were just walking to the beach so we could see where it was. We'd look around, then come back home and do some more unpacking.

Ha ha.

We walked a block or two, took a little path between houses to get to the beach, then took our sandals off and stepped into the sand. My boys had only been to the ocean once, on a windy December day in Los Angeles. This was nothing like that!  Here was warm sun, a pleasant breeze, and gentle waves of inviting waters. At first the boys just got their feet wet.

But then a big wave came by and knocked the smaller boy down. Of course he didn't mind that a bit.

Before long, the other one got "knocked down" too, and since they were already wet they thought they might as well play in the surf for a while.

I can't believe I didn't see that coming.

I called the boys in before they got their fill of the waves, but not before their pockets got their fill of sand. My daughter stayed behind to build sandcastles with her new friends while the boys and I walked home. The boys collected some souvenirs from their first trip to the beach--a coconut, some wild almonds, and a strange black nut that made a big blob of grease on the back patio table.

I shook about five pounds of sand out of those clothes, and had to throw the cargo pants away because the sand got in the liner. No way was I going to put that much sand in the washing machine. I scraped another handful of sand out of the bathtub after the boys got cleaned up. From now on, we wear swimsuits to the beach.