STONES

Usually, we’ve been at the beach when the tide has been going out. Gradually the water recedes across the mud and sand until you can’t hear the waves any more, and all that’s left is a sheen of flat wet grey, peppered with glistening stones and rocks.

Today though, we were earlier. It was the last day, so we’d packed up after breakfast and vacated. And today then, we sat on the beach while the tide was coming in, and not out.

We had to move backwards three times. I was in a bind because my Dad had persuaded himself that high tide was at noon, and I knew from the Internet that it was actually at 12:16. I didn’t want to say anything so I let him tell us that it wouldn’t reach us, that it would ‘turn and start going out again’, ‘couldn’t get much further in’ as it was ‘already midday’... and as I say we had to move three times. I should have told him I suppose, but I didn’t want to be a bubble burster, and there seemed little benefit at the time.

Each move up the beach, I set up a little cairn of stones where my feet had been, then watched it from the new position. The water seeped in. Each pile was lapped, surrounded, and then submerged by the incoming sea, toppling over with a musical little clack as the pebbles fell. I was feeling deep so I wrote this little poem called Stones.

Stones

Today I built a pile of stones 

Upon a pebble beach

And wondered if the sea would know

My stones were out of reach

So grand the things I build today 

So wondrous in design!

But when the tide has washed its way

What will I leave behind?

After that, the plan unfolded deliciously, with lunch at the Driftwood. We even managed to find a table in the shade, which my skin was very grateful for.

And then, just like that, we went home. Petrol, services, M5, M4, home and tired and happy and sad all at the same time. The hot sun pounded through the evening, even as I said goodbye to the Intrepids and wound my way back to my flat.

“What’s been your highlight?” asked my Mum on the journey. I took ages to think it through.

“Maybe the steam train,” I said. “Perhaps the funicular railway, or just sitting and sketching.”

My Dad (who’s always thought I was a really good artist) nodded in agreement from the back seat. His highlight was Lynmouth, which my Mum found surprising. It occurred to me much later that neither of us then asked her what hers had been! I wish I had.

We build piles of stones everywhere, I think. Little empires of stuff that feel like the most important thing in the world at the time; I’ve just left a job with 9 years of empire to let go of! But time and tide wait for no-one, and stones are precarious against the changing waves. I don’t want to forget, not even for a moment, that it was people who mattered, people whose lives were changed  and people whom I had hoped would grow in love and kindness.

There were my parents, shuffling chairs down the beach as the waters rolled in - the kindest people I know. There was I, building piles of stones, spending the last day of five years of holidays with them, hoping that that little kindness (and believe me, my sisters think I’m a bit crazy) has made a difference to them, and perhaps to me too.

Some things after all, the tide cannot touch.