Flashback to an earlier flash
this is also a flashback to Grace is having a birthday--we never stop worrying Treasures in the Sand July 2015, Mothers Always Write When my daughter was five or six I packed the car and drove to the lake. I had to lug bottles of water, a bag of fishy-smelling beach toys, a lunch cooler, and a lawn chair across the parking lot and down the stairs to the beach. I stopped to take a breath and take in the scenery. Broken flips flops, water engorged diapers, plastic bags, and pieces of glass littered the shore from the weekend. My daughter took off barefoot to scare a gaggle of seagulls. I screeched for her to be careful (I imagined her cutting her foot and getting an infection), but only managed to scatter the seagulls before she got to them. I set up my lawn chair, trying to avoid a decomposing fish with flies buzzing around its dead jelly eyes. Almost immediately we were surrounded by a horde of children wanting to borrow our beach toys. I could not keep track of them and m...