When I was a kid, my father built us a sandbox. As with almost every project my father undertook, it was overly grand. It had four seats, one on each corner, and a plexiglas covering that while it could be tilted to keep the sun out, also trapped the heat in, turning the sandbox into a furnace in summer. On really hot Northwest days, I’m surprised the sand didn’t turn into glass.
Since a picture is always worth a thousand words, here is my dad’s monument to sand play. I am on the left, my one-time brother Jeff on the right, and Jocko, our Scotty is in the sand, probably dropping dog-logs into it like he often did. I think he thought he was a cat.
In the winter time, we would take the roof off of it. Not because it was never sunny in Seattle during the winter months. No, it was because the roof was pressed into service in the front yard, serving as the creche to house our lit nativity scene, featuring a very white baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph. I’m not trying to make a racial statement here. For some reason, my father didn’t buy the holy family in color, only the white plastic one. While they glowed beautifully at night, by day they looked kind of ghostly and frankly, a bit creepy.
It was in this sandbox that I learned about possibilities. I, like every other kid, made endless things out of semi-wet sand – castles, forts, moats, rivers – you name it. Since the ocean was a couple hours away, I simply used it as my substitute beach. I would regularly hall the garden hose over to the sandbox and turn it into the perfect material for making stuff, from the requisite mud pies (well, they were more like sandwiches – sorry, had to take the joke) to sand sculptures that were so abstract, only I knew what they were. Well, I like to think I did.
I think you’ll agree that sand is pretty amazing stuff. Have you ever taken time to really look at it? All these little individual grains of what in other circles would be called dirt. But sand can do things dirt never could. It can make sand castles. It can make those really worthless colored-sand glass birds your kids browbeat you into buying at the state fair, and it can make glass.
Therein lies the beauty of sand – the possibilities. When I worked in downtown Seattle, I was fortunate enough to be assigned to the the Pacific First Centre. The lobby was filled with stunning glass sculptures by some guy by the name of… now, what was it? Oh yeah, Dale Chihuly. You might know the guy’s work nowadays, but back then he was just an up and comer whose glass work redefined the art of glass making. Freaking amazing stuff and off the charts in terms of creativity and beauty.
Sand have never looked so beautiful. I know it never did in my sandbox of possibilities. I never dreamed that you could do such wondrous things with basic sand.
If you’ve ever been to a sand sculpture competition on a nearby beach (for you in the midwest, that’s the the part of the land that borders the ocean), then you can see sand in an entirely different light. It is no less stunning than the works of Chihuly either. When I was a kid making sand castles on the beach, I had no idea that anyone could make these amazing works of art out of the same sand. I now curse the work I did, slaving for hours on the beach or in my sandbox, using such primitive tools as a popsicle stick. If only I had had access to sculptor tools…
As usual, I digress.
The point of this entire story today is that we all live in a sandbox of possibilities. Some of us are just content sitting in the sand, enjoying the view from its warm and welcoming environs. And that is entirely fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. If there was, then God wouldn’t have made so many sandy beaches to go vacationing on. He would have just made beach after beach of jagged rocks so we didn’t stay dilly-dally too long there.
Others see the sand differently. It’s filled with endless possibilities. They don’t see it in its current form, but in ways we could have never imagined. It’s not even like they had to take a huge leap of faith to do so. Dale Chihuly didn’t invent glass. Some artisans in Mesopotamia figured that out in 3500 BC. Undoubtedly, they raided their kid’s sandbox one day, heated some sand up and before you knew it, they ended up with glass. Did they know what to do with it then? Probably not. They certainly didn’t turn out a Chihuly on their first tries.
We all have a sandbox of possibilities. We can make anything we want if we choose to. We just have to figure out what all the possibilities are, choose one or even a couple, and then start working toward making them into reality.
It’s like having a big pile of wet sand before you. As you begin to work with it, it starts to take shape. Before long, through your guidance, it begins to become something recognizable. It takes on a life of its own. Imagination is manifested into reality, simply because you chose to get your hands a little dirty and start investigating the possibilities. Your creativity flows, your instincts guide you and your vision suddenly becomes clear.
Life is that pile of wet sand. Everything really is possible, no matter if you’re still a child dreaming of what he or she wants to be some day or a fifty something man or woman who still wonders what they want to do with the rest of their lives.
The beauty of sand is it’s not concrete. And neither is life. We are lucky enough to be able to reshape it time and time again… knowing that one day we too could end up with something we absolutely love – a true work of art.
Out on the Treasure Coast, thinking about playing in the sandbox that God left me across the street,
– Robb