I brought my teenage grandkids to an ocean beach on a hot July afternoon. After we situated our towels, umbrella, and cooler, the kids ran down to the water, and I settled into a low beach chair to read. Soon, a family with older kids set up in front of me.
One of the kids who looked to be college age took a small baby food jar from his backpack and discreetly filled it with some soft sand. He closed it tightly, looked around, and placed it back inside the pack. Later, my grandkids made friends with him, talking about colleges, sports, and video games. He was visiting with his family, he said, and they come every year to Cape Cod.
I hesitated, then asked him why he had saved the sand. He replied that he missed his grandma, and he always gathered a little sand from her favorite beach to sprinkle on her grave. —Marie Collins, Eastham
Readers are invited to send their own mini-stories (word limit: 200) about funny, illuminating, only-on-the-Outer-Cape moments to [email protected] for consideration for “Incidentally.” We hope this will become a place for recording memorable snippets overheard at the post office, grocery store, beach, or wherever our stories take place.
