Noooooo!  Picture it. The family has gathered on the crowded Parksville Beach on a July Sunday afternoon. Off in the distance, kites are flying and some are even buzzing as they do somersaults over their thirty foot long tails. There is a rainbow-coloured pirate ship sailing in the azure sky. Listen to the sound of the live music coming from the gazebo and the hum of hordes of happy children. Look out over the mountains in the distance, rising above the perfect Pacific, and above, just few enough fluffy clouds to declare it a scorcher of an Island day.

There’s a lot less sand on the beach than I remember from my childhood, but now the acres that remain are dotted with umbrellas and laid back groups on beach chairs, all with delighted kids hopping around them. Including this family. They have a major project nearing completion.

My guess is that the foundations of this sand castle would have been dug as soon as the tide receded, leaving the wet sand perfect for the job. Now it is almost done. A little boy about five is reaching up to plant the seaweed flag. The incoming tide is just beginning to lick across the beach, now just yards away. What a masterpiece! See the turrets that might hide Rapunzels. Admire their thatch roofs crafted with drenched sand dripped oh so carefully in layer after layer of little globs to make those perfect peaks. Be amazed at the flights of stairs like an Escher painting. Notice the crenellations along all the battlements, and drawbridges over the water-filled moat. Yup! There’s the crab zoo in the moat! Every Parksville sand castle has to have that. It is perfect in every way.

Nooooooo!

A girl about eight sees him first. She leaps out of her lawn chair where she has been resting, admiring the kites and her family’s handiwork. She knows how toddlers think. He is sloshing through puddles without a care, his diaper drooping inside his sunsuit and his sunhat akimbo. His arms are raised in a crossing-the-finish-line wave of triumph. He’s saying “oooooh”, in that single minded way of a 15 month old on a mission. The girl knows that there is only one way this kid can admire the castle, and that is by taking it apart. She heads him off in the nick of time. Cedar’s mom catches up to my grandson and swoops him into her arms. “See, Cedar, a nice sand castle, no no, don’t touch”.

In my childhood, building a sand castle just like this was always part of a perfect camping day on Parksville Beach. My mom would be lying on her stomach back on the dry sand, under an umbrella and with a book, and we would know that she was in her bliss. Dad would have been with us though, dancing around us and encouraging each of us five kids … or was it six yet? … to raise our architectural goals by offering prizes. A popsicle? … a hot dog? No! a Banana Sunday! I remember that dad would offer a first prize of something otherwise out of bounds, like a Banana Sunday, with just one proviso. The winner would have to share it with daddy. There would be a prize for every one of us, though, now that I think back. My favourite category was “the stinkiest castle” which would have us slopping all the seaweed we could find on our curtain walls. This family having fun reminded me of my childhood’s best memories.

But I am making new memories now with my grandchild Cedar, the demolition expert. He’s been visiting for a few days, and my husband and I have been tasked with keeping him amused while mom finishes a university project that’s due next week. We had taken a picnic to Parksville Beach to give mom a break for her brain with a bit of toddler tackling.

The weekend was the best that Oceanside can produce. The St. Mark’s Fair in Qualicum Beach was in full swing on Saturday, with a phalanx of folks looking for bargains. It put Cedar right to sleep, lolling his head in a way that would have left me in a neck brace. He stayed that way long enough for us to all enjoy an espresso in the shady patio of the Courtyard Cafe. Once my son, his daddy, had got on the Greyhound to go back to Victoria and work the next day, it was full on for the grandparents, and we loved it.

I ask myself, though, how my mother could have ever managed to have five kids under ten, and still survive. I had two children, nicely spaced, so that my son was following most orders before my daughter came on the scene. But my husband and I rose to the occasion just fine yesterday. We went back and forth several times to the shaded park behind Qualicum Beach’s swimming pool. The baby swings were a great work out, getting the little legs into the holes and the bundle settled so as not to knock out brand new teeth on the rubber, before the wheeeeee! of the under-duckie a few dozen times. That was followed by the hair raising climbing structure with its enticing but unprotected platforms eight feet off the ground. And the soccer field! Under my feet, it felt like a spongy cool expanse of green, but for Cedar it was just an obstacle in the way of what he really wanted, the fence! It made a squeaky boing-boing sound, and was perfect for leaning-back practice. The crows competed with Cedar for the cheerios set out in the batter’s cage, and Cedar popped them in his mouth using the 20 second rule.

I wonder what other grandmothers do to entertain toddlers when they come to visit in Parksville and Qualicum Beach?

Janet Dunnett
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