Tidepools

As a young child, for a couple of weeks each year, we traded our suburban comfort for stretches of white-sand beaches along the KwaZulu-Natal coast. We spent our days on the shore, in places called Amanzimtoti or Umhlanga Rocks. Blowholes whistled between rocks as the warm Indian Ocean ebbed and returned with the pull of the moon. Sometimes the wind rose just enough to send ribbons of sand blowing across the beach, the grains stinging our ankles before melting back into the tide.

The sand changed texture with the tides, sometimes coarse and gritty from shattered pansy shells, sometimes soft as velvet, a rumpled blanket between lapping waves and neatly trimmed lawns. Palm trees dotted the perimeter, beyond which promenades stretched, where we rinsed our sticky hands at fountains marked Whites Only.

My sister and I combed the beach with our small plastic buckets and matching spades, collecting nature’s treasures, perhaps enough for a necklace for grandma. We dug, poked, and prodded for the next delight. Our blonde hair glinted in the sunlight, our limbs moved with the ease and energy of well-nourished children. Surprise and laughter echoed as each rogue wave caught us unaware. Occasionally, our mother looked up from her thick James Michener paperback, “Girls, be careful.”

Sometimes, what’s special and wonderful becomes clear only many years later. I’d like to say I experienced visceral happiness in the moment, but as a five-year-old with no other life to compare, the sensual pleasures may have eluded me as I floated through those sun-drenched days. Still, I imagine now the sheer joy of it: the warm sun on my back, the smell of sea air made rich by salt and plant life. Maybe a light breeze rode in on a gentle wave, the sand oozing between my toes as the foamy water retreated. I picture the promise of lunch, crab salad rolls or Welsh rarebit, followed by a creamy banana popsicle to soothe my rumbling tummy. A small feast, earned by the steady rhythm of play and the innocence of not yet knowing what could be lost.

I didn’t know then that those golden days would become a map I’d spend decades retracing. Or that beneath the stillness, a fault line was already forming. I was a child carried forward by love, comfort, and privilege, blissfully unaware of what lay just beyond the horizon.