A Perfect Day

When you look at the center, boil it all down, dig down deep . . . all you really need to be happy is a useful role—something fulfilling but hopefully not too difficult. Maybe a job that works your muscles but also allows you to think grander thoughts while you’re doing it. And it’s an added bonus if you can do that job somewhere really beautiful. And your family is there with you—everyone working at a mutual goal. Well, I think that would be just about perfect.

I often think back to June 1997—to a perfect day. It was not too hot or too cold. I can remember it easily because no other day has really compared in both its simplicity and beauty. In that perfect day were sequences of perfect moments. On a broad, uncrowded beach just steps from our little rented cottage in Seaside, Oregon, we were digging in the sand.

We had built Walker Castle, next to Walker Lake, just downstream from Walker River. At first we wanted to have the river meet the great  Pacific and thus draw a constant supply of saltwater into our handcrafted reservoir. The only flaw in this plan was that we were too far away from the water—we didn’t want to get all wet while we worked, after all.

So it became my job to hike out to the shallows, fill my bucket with water, return, then dump the salty liquid into the river. My 3-year-old son’s job was to make the river deeper. My 1-year-old son’s job was to cover himself in sand and occasionally take a bite of that same whole grain goodness. Okay, he only took one bite and learned his lesson. Chomp. Wah. (See video on Facebook . . . http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=734124491649&saved)

The water would disappear immediately into the thirsty sand. So I would hike out to the waves again. Return, rinse, repeat. The boys were too young to fight much or to be teenager annoying—they were actually pretty sweet, as they always are on the beach. After an easy day’s work, we all retired to the faded cedar beachhouse to watch the sunset burn down into the advancing Pacific. We turned on the TV but all was on was us . . . and upside down kids! (See another video on Facebook . . . http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=734123533569) We laughed hard, then after a few hours, we grabbed a flashlight and went outside again in search of sea creatures abandoned by the tide.

Perfect.