I had given Sam a metal detector for a birthday present quite a while ago. I think he may have expressed a passing desire for one at some point, probably because he saw someone using one in a cartoon, but it’s been a while and I can’t remember the exact circumstances. Wherever the spark came from, it was at least in part, in very large part, a ploy to get him out of the house. This worked for a while, but gradually Sam lost interest, and the metal detector sat in the corner of the dining room gathering dust ever since. I figured it was forgotten, but apparently not. When Sam heard we were going on vacation, it was his idea to bring the metal detector along.
So there was Sam, behind our tent on the beach, pacing slowly in a meandering circle, patiently sweeping the metal detector side to side as he walked, hoping to find some buried treasure. Every so often the detector would beep and Sam would take his plastic shovel and scoop up some sand. In the time I had gone for my walk, Sam had developed a pretty good system. After scooping the sand, he would first wave the metal detector over the hole and if he wasn’t getting a beep, he would hold it over his shovel full of sand. If he got a beep, he would slowly sift the sand until something showed up, otherwise it was back to the hole where he would start all over again.
Sam kept it up for quite a while but I could see that he was starting to get discouraged. He had been at this for over an hour and his booty consisted of a couple of bottle caps, the occasional piece of crumpled up foil, and for some odd reason, a couple of cigarette butts (which, thankfully, he had the good sense not to pick up). We had a little while to go before we could pick up the key to the cottage, but his pacing was getting slower and slower and he was developing “that look”. This is the look he gets that starts out as a soft, contented smile, but gradually devolves into a tighter and tighter grimace as his fatigue and frustration sets in. I did my best to play it up. "Keep looking Sam, you're doing great!", I'd say, but clearly, he was having none of it. Oh, he was going to continue on. He had it in his sights and since he's my son, he would obsess about it until he hit some kind of payoff, or it was time to leave- whichever came last...just like me.
Like me at his age, Sam is not a beach guy. Unlike me, he doesn’t really complain about it- unless it gets dire. He doesn’t swim and he’s never been big into digging holes or making sand castles. He'll go along with it, but it's only to make you happy. Like his brother and sisters, he likes hermit crabs. But unlike his brother and sisters, he leaves them alone. He doesn't collect them in a bucket or make new homes for them. I think he figures they’re happier where they are over any new home he could dig for them, and he’s more content to let them be.
Sam is also a person who likes his hands clean, and if that’s the kind of person you happen to be, well, there are better places to be than at the beach. But he puts up with it.
I could relate to some of this. I just wished that I could find some way to make the day at the beach a little more fun for him.
Sam kept looking in the sand and I left him to his hunt and I joined Jake for a walk to explore the shallow water over by the rocks. When we came back, Sam was still looking. I excused myself for a minute and walked up the tall stairs, past the snack bar to where the van was parked. When I came back down, Sam had just about had it.
As I made my way back down to the tent, I told Sam I thought I spotted something where I had been standing a moment ago, and suggested that maybe he should check around there. He did and sure enough, there was a quarter that someone must have dropped. Pretty soon, he came upon a few pennies and a nickel. This brightened things up considerably. Little by little he found more coins, along with the stray bottle cap and piece of trash. He was getting a pretty good collection going, but by then it was getting time to pack up and leave. We gathered our stuff, took down the tent and made our way across the hot sand and up the even hotter steps, back to the van, so we could get some pizza and then pick up the key to the cottage.
Later, as we drove to get the key, I wondered what Sam would remember about this day- or if he'd remember any of it at all. At some level, I knew it really didn't matter.
I thought back to a time, many years ago, when I was little. My Dad was digging a patio in the back yard and somehow, one of us kids spotted a coin in the dirt. Before long, more coins were found as me and my brother and sisters, and even some neighborhood kids, were digging in the dirt for treasure. I don’t remember much more than that. But... I feel it. I feel the fun and I feel the excitement and for some odd reason, I feel warmth- not for whatever it was that I found, because, to be honest, I really can’t remember what it was that I found. But I'm left with that feeling. And I know, after all of these years, that whatever I had found there, it was priceless.
Sam had fun today and that's what mattered.
Now it was time to get the key.
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