It was a little after 7:30 in the evening when we
all gathered down on the beach. Jon and Ron were busy digging a hole in the
sand near where the waves were washing gently up the steep inclines so common
on the Outer Banks. Three other families, several football fields up the beach
had the same idea. Soon, the flames were making crackling sounds as they
wrapped around the bone dry wood I had bought earlier in the day from the one
armed man at the Shell station who let me name my own price since he couldn’t
help me load it in the back of my car. I gave him a five dollar bill. “If you’re
happy, I’m happy”, he said.
Soon the little ones came down to see the fire,
their eyes wide with expectation. By the time we started roasting marshmallows
for the s’mores the fire was a blaze, sending strange shadows across the sand.
It was getting dark and now the fire was lighting up faces all around. There
was a Kryptonite sighting and all the attendant squealing fun as Bennett
screamed out his warning.
I sat quiet and still taking in the moment, the
chocolate and marshmallow smeared faces of the children, the tanned face of my
daughter as she stared at her fiancé, my son sitting next to his mother deep in
some conversation. I watched my two sisters and their husbands, my nieces
smiling at their children with Matt hovering with his camera taking thoughtful
pictures that we will point to years later as we ask, “Do you remember that
night?”
On this most perfect of nights, I miss my Mom. This
was the sort of thing that she lived for, family all together having fun. She
would have loved it. I also thought of my Dad who couldn’t make this trip with
us. He would have loved it too.
As the fire died down, we walked down to the water’s
edge and stomped around in the wet sand, and like magic, tiny specks of light
appeared around our feet. Noctiluca, it’s called, a terrible name for something
so romantic. It was nice to feel something like wonder at age 55. It was at
this moment, watching my family dancing on the beach, pawing at the sand and
pointing at what looked like a miracle that it occurred to me that I will be
doing this for the rest of my life. I will be making a trip to the beach with
my wildly boisterous family every two years until the day that I, like Dad can’t
make the trip…because this is what families do. I will watch the little ones
grow to become teenagers, replaced by little ones of my own someday. Someday,
my grandchildren will be old enough to carry my chair and cooler down to the
beach for me. The family will grow and get younger, louder and more difficult
to cram into one house, but we will always do it, because to miss out on the
magic of a fire on the beach isn’t worth the risk.
