By Isabelle Gerhart
The waves recede back out to the water just to resurface and gently nudge me. They won’t take me yet. There is plenty of time for someone to find me. I wonder who it will be. The beach is not crowded. Really, I reside less on a beach and more in a hollowed out cove by the cliffs. If you know of a certain grassy slope, it’s easy enough to come here and lounge on soft sands. For the more adventurous, a creative soul fashioned a rope swing a long time ago that still hangs for swinging out to the lake.
“Slow down,” calls out a voice.
“I will, I will, Daddy,” comes the reply from an eager voice.
Within moments, I look up and see you plop down next to me. You are small, probably four-years-old, and in a pink swimsuit. You are industrious and have brought armfuls of colorful green, red, and yellow pails with you and what appears to be a whole stack of plastic shovels and sand shifters. Your dad is close behind you with a chair, an umbrella, and enough sunscreen to blot out the sun for the next year.
I remember so clearly that your gusto for the sand and the surf was not diminished by the walk down the hill. You quickly set to work digging a hole, kicking the water, stomping on sea foam, and collecting sea shells to put on the mound you called a “sand castle.” Your shovel scooped the sand close to me and I remember watching some of my brethren become part of your structures. My cousins, the sea glass, and extended relatives, the sticks and driftwood, also adorned your castle as windows and doors. I wonder if you will pick me. I hope you will. The tide would eventually come back.
I hear you laughing and squealing. Your dad tosses a beach ball to you, and it bounces close to me after you miss. You run after it and scoop it up. Your heel lands close to me and your toes dip into the water. You build, swim, laugh, and play. Eventually, you decide to stand to stare out into the water. Perhaps a bird caught your attention or perhaps you saw something only a child could see. Either way, you paused. That was when your dad came over.
“Have I showed you how to skip a rock before?” he asked.
You shake your head.
“No, Dad,” you reply.
Your dad digs his hand into the sand and pulls out a flat rock. Your dad has unearthed Zeek. He’s green and black, a nice big flat guy, perfect for skipping. At least, he thinks he’s good at skipping. He’s been sitting on the beach bragging about it for weeks even though no one has seen him be skipped before. Your dad shows you how to hold the rock and how to curl your fingers around it just right. He explains to you how he’s angling his arm.
Zeek is laughing and boasting the whole time, but no one is paying him any mind. Then your dad winds up and tosses the rock. Zeek laughs as he skips five times across the lake. I guess he was a good skipper.
“Now you find a rock and try,” says your dad.
“Got one!” you triumphantly proclaim.
You pick up a hefty round rock, brown and full of crags. It’s the opposite of a good skipping rock. You gleefully toss it out toward the sea with all your might.
Kerplop! Goes the rock with a satisfying splash about a foot out into the lake.
“Whelp, there goes Fred,” I thought to myself.
“I made a big splash!” you laugh.
“It was a good splash,” says your dad. “Want to try skipping? Here, this one is good and flat.”
Your dad hands you a flat gray rock. Ida. She is a good skipper. I once saw someone throw her across the lake and she skipped twelve whole times.
You dad puts the rock in your hands, he adjusts your fingers, and guides your arm back to where you should throw it. Together, you throw it. It bounces once then plops! into the water with a satisfying gurgle.
“We did it! I want to try all by myself,” you shout.
Then, it happens.
You reach down by your foot and pick me up. You stretch your arm back and hurl me out into the water.
Plunk! I hit the water and sink beneath. You did not skip me or make it far, but, nonetheless, you have noticed me. I am not worried. Eventually, the tide will bring me back onto the beach. I will be spit back out onto the sand and someone else might come and skip me or use me as decoration on their sand castle.
As I slowly float into the blue-green water, I can see your blurry reflection. You are bouncing around on the sand, the beach where I had lain for so long, and you jump and clap. You are kicking up sand and throwing rocks into the water left and right.
Bruce, a red stone gets tossed. Mary, a black rock is also thrown. Victoria, a blue gray rock, shortly follows. Bryce, who is a stick not a stone, also gets thrown in. Apparently your rock skipping lesson has been interpreted as a throwing party.
“Alright, alright,” your dad says. His voice is muffled by the layers of water above me and slightly drowned out by your peals of laughter, but I still hear the smile in his voice.
“It’s time to go home,” he says.
“But I want to stay,” you say.
“We’ll come back another time,” he says.
“Okay,” you say.
I see you kicking up sand and getting in a few last splashes along the shoreline as you collect your shovels and rescue pails from the water. Your dad packs everything up. My last glimpse of you is of you walking up the grassy slope as I gently touch the soft sand at the bottom of the lake. I have reached my new bed.
I catch up with old friends and relatives I haven’t seen for a while. We get tossed around gently in the waves, and I am rocked to sleep every night. When I look up at night, I see a pale wavering shape. Fred tells me this is the moon. In the mornings, when strong beams of light reach their fingers into the lake to touch the murky lake bottom and a gentle glow surrounds me, I feel warm. Ida tells me this is the sun. Many moons and suns pass. I am rocked back and forth by the lake. I pass out and in. Little by little, I wear down. My edges become smoother and I am made a little smaller. That is okay. My grains wash up upon the shore.
Then one day, I am back on the beach. A few feet down from where I first lay. Many footsteps have trod these secret sands and many voices have been carried by these cliffside breezes. Not much has changed since when I last resided on the beach. By some strange happenstance, I see you again.
You are coming down to the beach again. Now you are older. You look maybe ten. You come with your mom, your dad, and four younger siblings. Three younger sisters and one younger brother. One who looks about six and might be in kindergarten, one who is probably four like you once were and possibly could be starting preschool soon, one who is two, and one who is a baby carried in your mom’s arms. Again, as you set up supplies, I notice your family has trucked in enough buckets and shovels for a whole mining exhibition and your dad has, once again, carted in enough sunscreen to shower a small continent in it.
You all skip and giggle. You show your sisters how to build moats. You hunt for sea glass and bring it to your mom who has a pocket on her beach cover up just for it. You all plan on going home and gluing it everywhere in the pursuit of art. Soon enough, you are all soaking wet and a castle has been built. It is much more architecturally sound than your first construction I saw so many years ago.
Then you pause.
“Do you want to learn how to skip rocks?” you ask your younger sister, the one that is closest to you in age.
“Sure,” she says.
Then, it happens again. You pick me up. You explain to your sister how to hold a rock. You show her how you have placed your fingers on me. You wind up and throw me. I sail in the wind, and I skip twice. You have been practicing since the last time I saw you at this beach. I hit the water with a splat! and sink down.
Your sister choses a rock, Rose, and she winds it up and tosses it out. Rose sails through the air. She doesn’t skip, but she makes it far out and lands with a dip! and a plink! as she begins to sink beneath the surface.
“Good try,” I hear you tell your sister.
Rose comments beside me that your sister did have a good strong throw as we both drift down towards the bottom of the lake.
You and your sister and one of your other sisters practice throwing rocks. Your dad joins in and your mom tries too with one arm around her baby and one hand throwing my cousin Rob out into the lake.
Just before I hit the bottom, I see you all smiling and laughing. You are all having a good day at the beach. Eventually, you head home with shorts full of sand and heads full of happy memories.
Just as before, I wear and I weather. I talk to the sticks, the glass, the driftwood, and the plants at the bottom of the sea. Zeek still thinks he’s the best, Ida still holds the record for most skips, and Bryce doesn’t really remember how you once tried to skip him even though he’s a stick and not a rock. Suns and moons pass, and I slowly erode.
Then one day, I am back on the shore. A few inches above where I was that very first time. Weeks go by and I bake in the sun and grow chilly in the night. I like how the sun and moon look from this perspective too. They’re crisper. Less like a mirage that’s out of reach and more like something I could fly up to. Sometimes I wonder how it would feel to sink in air. I know how it feels to fly through the sky from all the times you have thrown me, and I know how it feels to break through the water until I land on the bottom. I wonder what it would be like to sink up instead of down. I wonder what it would be like to sink as slowly as I do in the water but up towards the sky. What would it be like to float instead of fly and drown? But these are just wonderings from a little stone. I am quite content with my lot of being a skipping stone.
One day, you are back. You have somebody else with you. You are older now. You are eighteen. He is your boyfriend. You both smile and laugh.
“It’s my favorite place. I loved coming here as a kid,” you tell this new person.
You indicate the beach. He seems to like it too.
You both talk and take turns jumping off the cliffs into the water. They are the perfect height and the water is the perfect depth. You both use the rope swing to leap into the water. You spend hours on the beach. I wonder if you’ll notice me. That little rock. I’m smaller now that I have been dunked in water so many times. I have seen many tides. I hear you talking again.
“When I was kid, I loved coming here. I have this old memory of my dad teaching me how to skip rocks here,” you say.
“Were you good? How many times can you skip a rock?” he says.
“I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve tried. Let’s see,” you say.
You walk over to the shoreline, a few inches from where you once stood as a kid, almost right where it all started, even though you and I have both traveled so far, and you, unbelievably, pick me up. I might not be as awesome as Zeek thinks he is, but I suppose I am still flat enough to be skipped. Perhaps all those waters I’ve treaded and wadded in have kept me smooth and useful.
I feel your sandy fingers curl around me. You stretch your arm back and let go. I fly. I briefly sink up before hitting the water with a satisfying sploosh! then I pop up again and sink up a little bit towards the sun before diving back down. I keep going up and down. One, two, three, six times I sail through the air.
As I sink down back into the water, I hear his voice.
“Not bad,” he says.
You both spend some time picking up rocks and throwing them in. He throws Ida and she sets a new record, seventeen, beating her own previous record of fifteen. You’re both trying to make it to twenty, but can’t quite get there. Eventually, you both leave. You get in his car and drive away. Again, I sit on the silt at the bottom of the lake and catch up with the world underneath yours. Time passes, and I chart the months moving by in the blurry reflection of stars above me.
A storm comes. It blows and blows and blots out the sun and the moon I love to follow. My peaceful ebb and flow is disrupted and I am thrown onto the beach. I am farther up the sand than I have ever been. I feel adrift this far from the lake. I am in the middle of an earthy oasis.
Soon after the storm, I hear feet coming down the grassy slope. It is you again. You are wearing a long breezy dress. You are twenty.
You have tears soaking your face. They stream down your face. It reminds me of the way the rain drops poured from the sky and hit the surface of the lake all throughout that strom. I felt the stabbing, violent, cold of those raindrops just as you feel the hot rivers of tears down your salty cheeks.
“It’s not fair!” you shout.
You pick up a rock that is way too big for you and throw it on the sand. You pick up rocks and sticks and throw them into the lake. You are alone at the beach this time and gone is the glee of your four-year-old throwing party.
“How could he!” you scream.
After a while, your rage calms down just as the tempest of clouds eventually passed. You sit curled up by the shoreline, a few feet from where we first met, with your knees pulled tight to your chest. You cry. You try to hold yourself together, but I can see you falling apart. I see you breaking down. I see your tears hitting the sand with a plop! the way I once hit the water. One after the other, like jumps from a stone, one after the other. You could have blotted out the sun for the next year and showered a small continent it seems with your tears. You drench the front of your dress with the salt water dripping off your chin and soak the sand with screams. Heaving sobs escape your chest like the ripples from a skipped stone raiding outward from a sudden happenstance. Bouncing rocks, rib racking sobs, thrown stones, shaking breaths, sinking sticks, sinking feelings, they are all the same really.
Eventually, you quiet. You sit in the sand and lean back on your hands. You look out into the lake seeing things that only a young adult can. Maybe you had an epiphany, maybe you just wanted to look at the sky, maybe the storm has passed in you, or maybe you saw something on the horizon. Either way, you paused.
You breathe. You pick up stones and toss them into the lake. Some you skip, some you just drop into the water. I think you like to watch them sink. I think you like the ripples. I think you like to hear the plop. Maybe something about those flying rocks makes you think of you. Maybe you only see your reflection in the water after you’ve disturbed it by sending something flying over it until it collides. Maybe you want to see how many times one thing can collide and skim over another thing until it must rest at the bottom. Maybe you are unaware of how things resurface even after they’ve been drowned. Maybe you are like the cycles of the waves and the moon too. Maybe you’ve spent as much time as I have watching things soar and ripple outwards. Maybe you crash too until you come back to the beach.
Maybe you have been on a journey even though I’ve only ever seen you in one place. Maybe you lose little pieces of your heart like I lose little pieces of myself when I weather. Maybe those little pieces of your heart stay scattered around the world and skip around. Maybe they build something bigger like how my little grains become the sand that builds the beach you stand on. Maybe we make safe places to stand after we’re broken. Maybe all the rocking and rolling in the waves is what makes my edges so perfect for skipping and gliding across the surface of a lake. Maybe you need a little wear and tear to stay smooth.
You breathe in and out. Footsteps walk down the grassy slope. They pass by me, pause, then reach down and scoop me up. Worn fingers curl around my smooth edges. The footsteps keep walking. They carry me to you. The footsteps stop beside you.
“Found you a good one,” your dad says.
He passes you me, and you curl your fingers around me. I rest in your palm. You rub my smooth surface between your thumb and fingers. Just like he taught you, all those years ago on this spot, you wind back your arm and throw me out to the lake. I skip, skip, skip, sixteen times out of sight.
I float down towards the bottom of the lake. I imagine I hear you breathing out as I sink down. I imagine your heat coming to rest somewhere safe as I come to rest at the bottom of the lake. I think I glimpse your dad put an arm around your shoulders. I imagine you let something go when you let me fly. I sink down to the bottom. I hope the pieces of your heart will sink up one day. You and your dad spend some time cleaning up the beach. It doesn’t look like you talk. It just looks like you clean up the beach. You pick up sticks, debris, and some trash. You check on the old rope swing and retie the knot. You make sure it is secured to the branch. You both look around the beach and take inventory. You have cleaned up after the storm. You stare out toward the lake, out beyond the cliffs ringing this coastal inlet, and see things that only a father and a daughter can see. You both turn around and walk back up the grassy slope.
I think for a little bit at the bottom of the lake. When I hit the surface of the lake, I only touch it briefly, yet that is the moment you wait for; that is the moment where I sink down and my journey ends or the moment where I sink up and arch again towards the sky. I only see you briefly, yet that is the moment I wait for. I only have so many memories of you. Only so many memories that are spread out. One after the other, like a line of places where I have touched the water as I skip from one place to the next. Time in between each little memory, time in between each skip. So much time in between where we can count the moon and the sun. Time in between where we wait for things to happen and wait for that next moment when stone touches water or heart meets land. So much time waiting for one instance. One instant that rippled outwards until those ripples meet up with the next one and somehow those airborne crests from my flight are connected on the lake’s watery surface. One memory skipping out and somehow affecting the next one even though those two points in time never touched.
I sink down to the bottom of the lake and watch the cycle start again. I wonder when you will come back to the beach. I wonder who you will be and how far I will fly next time I see you. I marvel at the beauty of you rock skippers.
It takes a long time for you to return. I sit at the bottom of the lake for years and gradually become smaller. I wash in and out as the sun rises and falls and the moon surmounts the day only to acquiesce to the daybreak again. I have been sitting on the beach for a while when I hear footsteps coming down the slope. I see you again. Now, you are much older. Your hair is tied up in a ponytail and you have two little kids stomping down the slope in front of you. One is a little girl who looks about six and the other is a little boy who looks about four. You are walking slowly because I see that you are pregnant with another little one. Beside you, is a man with dark hair and bright eyes. Somehow, you all come in with even more pails and shovels than ever before.
Your family begins to set up on the beach a few feet from where you first sat on the beach. You take out enough sunscreen to fill the sky for about a year and begin slathering it on the kids. Both of them squirm. As you reach out to take your oldest child’s arm to glob a handful of sunscreen on them, I get a good look at your hand. A hand that has reached into the ever changing sands of this beach many times to continue the same story. I see a rock on your left hand that is brighter than any other on the shore. It shines in the sunlight like the eyes of all the members in your little family and glints as bright as the sun when it sinks up in the pink lakeside mornings.
“Come back here and let me finish,” you say to your son as he wiggles away from you.
Your daughter was a little more patient with the sunscreen, so she is already kicking the water and your son is eager to join her.
“But I want to go swim!” says your son.
“Let me finish getting your back then you can,” you reply.
“I want to swim now,” complains your son.
“Listen to your mother,” calls your husband from where he is setting up an umbrella and chair.
Your son stands still and you finish applying the sunscreen.
“Go play now,” you say.
Your son skips away from you and kicks up piles of sand with his small feet.
For a while, you all splash down by the lakeshore. I am not worried about whether or not you will pick me up today and skip me. I am perfectly content to watch and listen to the laugh of your children, the way you giggle when your kids bury each other’s feet, and hear the echoes of your happiness radiate from the shoreline. The sun is burning hot, so eventually you all sit down under the umbrella on towels. You all start eating sandwiches from a cooler.
“So this is where you always went as a kid?” your husband asks between bites of a sandwich.
“Yes, I came here when I was happy and when I was sad. I have many memories of playing in the water,” you say. “My dad and I would come down here the most.”
You smile fondly when you say “my dad.” It is a sad and happy smile. The type of smile people get when they notice something in the clouds, perhaps a bird glinting through the tops of pines shaded by the blue above us all, or when an unexpected act of kindness catches them off guard. It is the kind of smile that makes me think you are reminiscing, remembering, remorseing, and rejoicing all at once.
“What was your favorite thing to do with your dad?” asks your husband.
“I loved to build sand castles and swim,” you say.
“I love swimming the most!” says your daughter.
“I like making sand castles!” says your son.
“My other favorite thing was to skip rocks and see how many times I could make them jump,” you say.
“How do you skip a rock?” asks your son.
“I’ll show you,” you say.
You stand up and brush some sand off of you.
You pick up a rock, Ida, and explain to your son how you are holding it. Your daughter wanders over to stand by you as you wind up. You throw and Ida skips further than I have ever seen her go. Ida laughs and shrieks the whole time. Eventually, we all lose sight of her.
“Wow,” says your son.
“My turn! My turn!” shouts your daughter.
“Me too! Me too!” yells your son.
“Alright,” you say. “The key is to find a smooth, flat rock.”
“Like this one?” asks your daughter, holding up Fred.
“Not quite,” you begin to say, but your daughter has already tossed Fred into the water. He makes a big splash, and your daughter laughs. Fred is no better at skipping than he was when you were a kid.
“I’ll go look for a different one,” says your daughter.
She industriously hunts the beach for a rock that is just so.
Meanwhile, you begin walking around the beach to find another rock.
“I need one,” your son says.
“I know. I’m looking, and you can look too,” you reply.
Together, your family wanders the beach to find perfect stones to throw, and you all keep munching on lunch.
Unbelievably, you spot me. I am so small now, but you still see me curled up by your family’s beach towel. Your hands dig into the sand and pull me up.
You walk over to the water.
“I have one,” you say to your son.
He runs over.
“Remember what I showed you,” you say.
You pass me to him. His little hands cup me. His fingers are as smooth as me; although, he is much younger. You help him place his fingers and demonstrate again how to swing your arm.
Your son winds up and throws me out over the water.
I skip one, two, three times before my flight ends with a slurp! into the water.
I float down to meet the bottom of the lake again and hear your family.
“I did it! I did it!” yells your son.
“You have a knack for it just like your grandpa did,” you say to him with that same reminiscing smile that makes me think you are feeling content and something deeper all at once. Maybe you could laugh or maybe salt water is about to skip down your face at a long past memory.
Your son dances around the shoreline and your daughter is happy to join in the fray and dash in and out of the water. Through the wavering water above me, I see your husband walk over to you and put an arm around you.
You both stand and stare out over the water. Some thought has made you both pause. Maybe you saw something beautiful in the sky or maybe you are both seeing things that only grown-ups can see.
Maybe the world is a little like this little beach. The tide comes in and out and the sands will change, but it is still the same place, just with few more memories and a little more wear. Maybe your life is a little like skipping rocks and handing me down to the younger generation. Some things pass on, but some things are tradition. Maybe that’s how you live. You may break down, but you will also rise to fly through the sky when you decide to put yourself out there. Sometimes you must wait and sit on the beach, but other times you can soar and see the world from a new perspective. Whether you are flying over a pond and sending out ripples of water or whether you are taking time to run across the sand and kick up sprays of sand, you are always doing something with your time. Something that has the potential to be passed down and remembered long after it is gone. The ripples fade after the flight, but the lake and the rocks remember. The way you handed me down to your child makes me wonder what else we have the power to hand down to a younger generation. The way you smile about your dad makes me think he knows what it feels like to sink up for the last time and never sink down like a stone again. Something tells me your dad rose like the sun and the moon. I think your father is beyond you and his time is passed, but I also think that some part of him is still grounded to this earth through the way you live.
After some time passes, you and your children pack up and leave. Your family climbs up the grassy slope, and you all drive away.
I wash up on the shore and recede back into the water as the years go on. I keep you in my thoughts as I discuss the turning of tides with Rose, Ida, Zeek, and Bryce. The word keeps turning, the sun keeps spinning, and the moon keeps pulling the waters up and down. Many, many years pass. I watch the stars and remember echoes of your laughter like glimmers on the horizon. I am very small now, for I have seen many waters and tread through time. I have ridden rough waves and gazed at many skies and clouds.
I wonder if I will ever see you or your family members again. I wonder if you will ever come back to the same place so we can make new memories.
Suddenly, one day, you are back. It is just you. You take your time going down the grassy slope and tread carefully. It is twilight and the first stars are waking up.
You sit down on the beach. You are next to me. By some miracle, you are sitting in the exact same place you were in when you first came here. This is the spot where it all started. The place where you first skipped a rock as a child. That first memory.
You look different from that first day, but I can tell it is still you. You are very old now. Your eyes are still bright and full of mirth even though you are elderly. You slowly sit down on the beach. There is no rush of noise today. The weather is good and the night clear. You are still as you look out over the lake towards the last bands of light on the horizon. Maybe you are noticing the sunset and thinking about watching it with your siblings, maybe you are waiting for the moon to rise and remembering your parents, maybe you are counting the constellations as they come out and seeing the faces of your grandchildren in the stars, or maybe you are seeing things that only someone who has lived their life can see.
You lean back on your hands and sit quietly and peacefully. I see your hands make depressions in the sand, and they sink down a little. They are covered in wrinkles, but they are still yours. The sand shifts from the disturbance of you sitting. I gently slide down the small slope towards your hand. I bump into it. Softly and without a sound. All that can be heard is the slow lapping of the water. Your fingers curl around me and feel my smooth surface. You chuckle a little and smile a faint smile as you lift me up. Your smile widens and your eyes are gentle. You sigh and weigh my small self in your hand.
“One last time,” you say to yourself.
You wind up, your hold on me is still perfect, and you throw. Your toss sends me flying out far. I lose track of how many times I skip, but the whole time I am rising and falling I can see you watching and smiling on the beach.
You spend more time quietly sitting as the sun finally dips down and the moon rises, bright and full, over the sands that have seen so much time and run through so many waters. You stand with a content smile on your face. You radiate more happiness and joy than every beam from the moon in the sky combined. You slowly turn and walk away from the beach. Your footsteps carry you up the grassy slope, and you sink up away from me.
I never saw you on that beach again. I assume you went on to bigger and better things. I hold onto my memories of you as I am sure you have held onto many memories as well. I am a small rock, worn very smooth, with little pieces of myself that broke off still adorning some beach somewhere. I like to think someone is standing on grains of my sand right now and that it feels stable and soft. I like to think that a kid is building sandcastles out of the bits of myself that broke off with time. I like to think some teenager is running down a beach with their friends. I like to think of adults pinicing in sand with people they love. I like to think an elderly person can look at the sands in the sky, the stars that twinkle and sprinkle the darkness, and remember all the things they have passed on. I like to think there is some everlasting reflection of us scattered throughout the world. Just as I have flown so many times, you are so much more than one thing. You have the potential to fly to so many places through your life. You have the ability to come back, grow, let go, and pass something on. You can remember and move on. You can put many things into flight. You can be beautiful and useful no matter how many waves and tides you must walk through. You will see many suns and moons change, but you will still be you. You can leave and come back. You can change and stay the same. You rock skippers amaze me. I hope you continue to fly towards the sky and across the waves.