stripped to sentiment

There is a sea breach on flat beach. It is mid morning in Florida.

“I have to say, I never thought my grandson would be setting me up.”

“I can’t blame you, but your grandson is an exceptional young man.”

“He is, he really is. He’s the definition of a mench. When he was 15, he won a scholarship for a paper he wrote.”

“I remember. You told me.”

“I feel like so much more has changed in the last thirty years than ever did when I was younger. I feel lost in it. Young people have it a lot harder than we did. I can’t stand all of the  screens. Everything is on a screen, now, even books. I feel like it would take another lifetime to learn everything they already know. Do you know what I mean?”

“An old saying is coming back to me. I believe it goes ‘Age makes children of  us all.’”

“That sounds remarkably fitting. I can barely dress myself these days.”

The sea ignores, them, and weather and time. It turns stone into pebble into glass. And still the young hurl themselves into it, trusting their bodies will protect them. The bodies do, for a while, at least. They both know this, that sand remember stones, that nothing ever stops moving. They look at each other. There is nothing new about a face after enough time just as there is nothing new about glass.

But that doesn’t mean you should stop looking.