Everyone is always complaining about how sand gets everywhere—it’s the universal caveat to beach enjoyment. I would like to oppose this enmity and present a stirring defense of the sand; of the grains that stick to your fingers like glue, swirling up and down the ocean damp-parts of your body, whispering sinister things about dirt and disease—filthy, filthy, filthy. But, imagine one day that the ocean was cleared of its sand, that an angry man out there—somewhere, someday—determined that the sand was no longer economically efficient and stripped the beaches of it, large empty caverns where the multicolored grains used to sit.
This hypothetical is not as absurd as you might believe. The United States Government has already claimed ownership of the airspace above us, what’s stopping them from moving to the sand between our toes? And even if you don’t think it sounds absurd, let’s say you’re intimately aware of the politics of ownership we talk through, maybe you don’t think it’s a bad thing. Maybe, you secretly think, it’s the same necessary evil as when an Amazon package comes to your house, a mere four hours after you ordered. Ethically dubious, but overall worthwhile. A beach without sand sounds like a California dream come true, the stuff Katy Perry might wail about. You could leave the beach a fantasy. Let’s set the scene: clear blue skies. 75 degrees Fahrenheit, UV at peak 9, slim tanned bodies diving between waves— effortlessly cutting through ocean currents. This is the type of grace you dream of at 14 and lanky, 14 with corn off the cob stuck in the wire of your braces, 14 and wanting more. The more: sun-kissed and ocean-warmed and and and beautiful. These beautiful, gleaming bodies arise majestically from the ocean, gliding out as if from a dream. No clunky beach bag clutched between sweaty armpits, no traces of sunscreen smeared on the bridges of noses, and no sand stuck in awkward places. Stripped of memory, stripped of existence.
The sand unfortunately placed in the sweaty caverns of pits and the hairy depths of ass-cheeks is more than an inconvenience, it is the record of that time a wave tumbled through you; when your limbs were scrambled furiously with the pounding ferocity of a force larger than you. And you bore the brunt of that force, praying for salvation, praying to be washed anew: born again, but beautiful. This is a vision foiled by the persistence of sand, its determination to crawl into your gaping holes—the human body has more holes than you might think—and declare itself home. It sticks as persistently as that humiliation from that one time you, eleven years old and arrogant, leaped into the ocean without a care in the world and emerged bottomless. It fuses itself into clumps of hair and makes a mess on shower floors never letting you forget where you’ve been.
Trouble with grains of sand, they’re harder to hold onto than you might think—easy to scoop large sopping wet clumps of it—but much harder to make sense of. Easy to buy one Krispy Kreme donut on Friday to stick in the microwave for fifteen seconds, just like my Ba Ngoai would tuck that one glazed donut into her purse, and bring it home after work. She, my Ong Ngoai, my mom and my aunt would watch the donut spin for those fifteen seconds in the microwave and split the steaming dough, glaze sliding off its rounded cliffs the way a sandcastle tumbles in on itself when faced with the waves, using two delicate fingers to enjoy the dessert. Easy to buy a donut for myself and eat it, harder to know what it would’ve been like to drive to Krispy Kreme with her. If she would break too hard at a stop light, prefer to pull into a parking spot nose first or back in, if she would turn the keys out of the ignition or unbuckle her seatbelt first.
If I could have one dream career, it would be to make gods out of people out of sand. I could get a lot done. I would use the tan-brown material to make a five feet tall statue—five feet would be a bit of a stretch but we can all wink and pretend that it was true. I would make a version of her not yet crumpled by chemo, with legs firm enough to stand unflinching on a boat for three days and three nights, no food and no water, sure enough that leaving Việt Nam was the only option. This sandcastle would not fold. My version of her would have the delicate swoop of dark hair that rests behind pale ears and caresses clear glasses, not the version of her with a rotating carousel of hats and wigs. A version of her that craved the earthy sweetness of mì vịt tiểm and not Carl’s Jr. fried zucchini. The wrists would be small, not crafted from memory but made exact to scale from the jade bracelets I can’t get to slide over the joint of my thumb. If parts of my sand statue would crumble, as sand is predisposed to do, I would take some of that Carl’s Jr. fried zucchini and carve her face back in, placing the greasy mangled vegetables into the divots of her eyes. I would spend hours at that sandfront, letting the water lap at my feet, as I made and remade her. If I try hard enough, I’m bound to get it right. Right?
Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Just like the tide of the ocean, just like my dad ran up and down the stairs when I was born. My mom: in the maternity ward. My Ba Ngoai: in the cancer ward. Up and down he would travel, rhythmic motions, bringing pictures of me for her to look at.
Memory sticks like sand to damp legs. It crawls into corners of the wooden floor and makes homes out of the creases of bedsheets. A sandless world isn’t as perfect as you might think, it’s a world in absence, the outline of a sketch too uncertain to be filled in.▲
