What I observed from my afternoon at the beach

Kids building sand castles are bossy.
Little siblings of kids building sand castles cannot win.

Parent watching their kid sneeze into a group of his friends needs to teach said kid to sneeze into his arm.
And not just say "bless you"
Especially during a pandemic.

Same parent needs to teach Sneezy not to feed the seagulls peanuts.

Kids shake their towels everywhere.

Bags of chips at the beach will go way quicker than a tub of fresh fruit.

I then observed Mom with two boys.

Oldest was happily wrapped up in a striped towel, sitting in her lap, chugging down a water.

Youngest was running in circles, giggling like a wild man, with a shovel in one hand and 3 bags of fore-mentioned chips in the other.

Those were my kids.
You know.
Not literally, obviously.

I wanted to go up to Mom and tell her not to blink.
Because if you do, you would be looking into the face of an upcoming high school junior and rising high school sophomore.

I wanted to tell her that your snuggler will remain sweet and chill and your wild man will eventually become (semi) less wild.

I wanted to let her know that she will miss the days of pails and shovels and would take them back in a heartbeat to replace academia life and adolescent eye rolls.

But the independence is nice. And so is your alone time at the beach.

And I wanted to let her know that her toddlers will grow into respectable, kind young men who will need to be reminded to shave and clean their rooms once in a while. They will be driving and towering over her and their voices will be deep and she will look into their faces on the last day of school and wonder how she got here.

And that's kind of 2020 isn't it?
2020 has been a year of reflection.

It has been a year of a lot of what the fuck?
It has been a year of sadness and awareness and fear and change

But yea, mostly a year of wondering how we got here.

All this, I got all from an afternoon at the beach starting with a bossy sandcastle maker.