I scramble out the front door - grandad insists this is the front door. It seems odd to me that the front door is on the back of the house. It will take me another 15 years to understand why this is the front door.
Less than ten leaping-running-steps to the cliff from the “front door” and then the steep climb down the red rock face. Red clay from the island nearby packs all the ancient roots and rocks together with tangled weeds they cling to one another against the harsh cold ocean. It is a love story.
Pebbles, pebbles, periwinkles, pebbles, for hours at a time there is no sand on this beach. Only broken pieces of seashells, and fragments from the slate rocks above, scattered in ripples across the beach. We follow the waves in the sand looking for treasure, looking for answers. Fistfulls of tiny blue and purple shells find a way to fill up my heart.
This way or that way. There are no cardinal directions. Do we go left, or do we go right? Today we go right. We sit and wait for low tide on the salt rock. We pretend to be pirates clinging to the starboard and practice how to swear, or we are lost boys and we tumble with somersaults over every obstacle. We have our biggest conversations here, and our most petty arguments. This rock knows all our secrets - we should push it out into the waters never to be seen again.
Low tide, sandbars as far as the eye can see. No time for losers, keep up or get left behind. We are running away, at least until 4pm - that’s when grandad puts dinner on the barbeque and if we aren't back in time and washed up we don’t get fed.
The sandbars are made of soft sand, not like the rough pebbles on the shore line. You sink into it as the waves lap at your feet. We bury jellyfish, pitch stray starfish back into the water, and paint each other's skin with the red clay. Into the water, out of the water, do we crash against the waves or do they crash against us? We try to make ourselves soft like seaweed so that we can drift away too.
Someone has left a pile of driftwood on the shore line. What does it mean? Where did it come from? Who put it there? We argue if the ocean did it or if someone down the beach did it. We argue with the sticks, clacking against one another - we are pirates again. It doesnt matter, the owner of the pile of driftwood comes barreling down the hill at us, we drop the sticks and run. Never really solving the mystery of the pile of driftwood.
Almost everything is still a mystery.