Building Sandcastles

I watched his hands move.  It's instinctual, a right of childhood passage, this playing in the sand thing.  We were building a castle together.  

He turned over the mold again and again, hoping it would stay together.  Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't.  He's learning.  I gathered a bucket of water and showed him how the salty cold water made the sand particularly sticky.  

We built the little castles together.  He used his digger to create a trench.  I smoothed the edges.  He'll catch on, by watching me. He'll get better, and maybe someday, he'll teach his own children the same way that I taught him.