Sandy

Sandy

The Lord is good and his mercy endures forever, his faithfulness to all generations.

By evening the windows on our cars were nearly impossible to see through. Windshield washer fluid helped a little, but only for a few minutes. The soft white Gulf sand coated everything.

We saw countless hats and t-shirts for sale with the word “Sandy” written in bold across the front. Oh, yeah. This was not something any of us remembered from ocean experiences of the past, this salt water sand, teeming with tiny living creatures, ready to stick to everything. This world was their home, but not mine.

Although I suppose it could be soon enough. The sky full of sunshine and the ocean brimming with fish, waves crashing every moment on the shore and lulling all of us into a seaside slumber, living with the sand might be like a new language, awkward at first but comfortable and even natural eventually.

We walked a quarter mile to the end of Horace Caldwell’s pier ($3 each, $1 for seniors) and watched a family reel in fish after fish. They weren’t big, but they were edible. “You catch ‘em, we’ll cook ‘em,” the sign said.
The fish were fighting in the water and all the way up in the air, and the pier is twenty-five feet above the waves. The rod is dancing, the line is singing, and there is lots of action as the reel strains to bring up the fish. Later we saw a picture of the biggest this week, a 675 pound blue fin tuna caught a few days ago not far off the coast of Port Aransas. Our pier’s catch didn’t come close, but it was sure fun to watch.

Although it was getting late (beach momentum making it hard to stop playing in the sand and running into the waves) we had dinner out, at Moby Dick’s, where old man Ishmael presided over us all from beside his whaling ship surrounded by beautiful blue mounted sailfish. Whitefish, stuffed crab, big shrimp and bigger oysters filled my seafood platter. We didn’t catch ‘em, but they cooked ‘em and I ate ‘em.

I sat across from Jasper, who quietly ate every bite of his meal and an extra fruit cocktail. It took awhile to get our food and he watched the other end of the big room for thirty minutes without saying a word. He saw a thousand things he had no name for. At home while Aki and Andi had a date, all of us cuddled while I read them a Robert Munch story, “David’s Father.” The illustrations scared all of us. They have more stable stomachs in Canada, I guess.

A so-far-quiet group of two couples from Marfa and Presidio, at the farthest end of west Texas, moved in upstairs for the weekend. “We didn’t bring our kids,” Omega said. Her husband is NOT named Alpha, but Alex. They will not be leading us to the Promised Land, as far as I know so far.

Andi and Aki stayed out late. Earlier on the beach they met two female Christian roommates, one surfing, the other reading. They exchanged telephone numbers and got together at Lela’s, walking distance from our house, and talked into the night.

There are so many interesting people here, who are happy to talk a bit about their lives. I think I’d enjoy being a Christian counselor in a place like this, where four thousand residents entertain as many as 60,000 guests on a summer weekend. Margaret and I drove through the University of Texas-Austin Marine Science Institute yesterday afternoon, where I have no doubt there are some more folks with fascinating stories.

Know that the Lord is God. He made us and his we are, we are the flock he tends.

(Acts 16, Psalm 100, Colossians 3, John 15)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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