I was staring at a cardboard column the other day; those long reinforced inserts inside shipping boxes to protect appliances. They didn’t fit inside the bin; half of them were sticking out.

Maybe someone bought a new fridge.

I threw the trash and walked home.

When my kids were little I brought them such columns and we built highways for their hot-wheels.

Imagine building a house out of these.

I imagined.

I even pictured it finished, cozy, admiring the builder for their skills.

A life found its way in.

A bed, a woven rug. Curtains and plants. A cradle and stuffed toys. Books and twinkle lights and bedtime stories and moonlight.

What if it rains?

It will hold.

What if the rain doesn’t stop?

I imagined a heavy rain and everything was gone.

I saw it collapsing inside my head; the front porch, the flowers, the twinkle lights still flickering, the cardboard floor, the rug, the columns, the roof.

Everything turned into a muddy pile. Gone.

Life is fragile. Didn’t you see what you built it with?

I see it. They didn’t.

You didn’t see it either when you were decorating your own.

I did the best I could with what I had.

So did they.

Then it wasn’t enough.

But the sandcastles.

I remembered the sandcastles I used to build as a kid.

The ones I’ve built with my kids when they were little, with beach pebbles and seashells and frost glass on the tower tops.

Or the others that people build for hours, sculpting masterful creations with towers and obelisks and moats and ramparts.

All this trouble to watch them later surrender to a single wave.

What’s the point of it, then.

Imagine investing so much time, effort and soul… for something that can be taken away so easily.

No. Imagine that you know it will be taken away for sure… and doing it anyway.

When you see it coming, it’s already late.

Late for whom?

I spent so much time by the sea this summer.

Every morning and every afternoon and almost every dawn and dusk.

My kids are in that age where sometimes going for swimming with their mother feels embarrassing.

Sometimes they’re still kids.

I draw koi fish on the sand with a driftwood and a tongue sticking out.

Two little kids look at me. I must look funny.

They bring their own sticks and draw funny faces on the sand. Maybe mine.

I put the stick above my mouth as a mustache and pretend I’m thinking. They giggle and draw a mustache on their sand faces.

My sons pretend they don’t know me.

I build sandcastles.

“Come”, I call them and most of the time they don’t.

That morning they came.

We used my coffee’s cup for bucket and the frisbee for shovel.

“You’re too close to the water”, my eldest points out.

By the time he says this a wave washes off half of our castle.

“The paper cup is too small for a tower” my youngest adds and they both kneel down, digging canals to redirect water.

Their hands are bigger than mine.

The little boy next to us licked the stick of his popsicle and put it on one of the towers. “A castle needs a flag!”

His sister brought a plastic bucket and a shovel and a sand rake.

The stray dog came closer.

We build more towers.

A ship sailing afar sends bigger waves to the shore.

Towers fall, piles of mud, the canals are flooding, and the little ones shriek.

The boys laugh and give instructions to each other.

“Bring it here” and “make that taller” and “let’s surround it” and “let that one send the water back in the sea”.

We build and we know it will fall.

What’s the point of all this, then.

We laugh.

No. The kids laugh. You laugh with them.

If I remove the kids I look at something that was destined to fail.

But sandcastle artists don’t see failure. They see a project. It has a starting point and a finish point and it returns to nothing and that’s what it’s supposed to be.

Life is different.

Is it?

Kids build their own best with what they have.

Sometimes that’s enough.

They don’t care about the wave. The little ones see it coming and they cheer and jump on the muddy piles. My teens see it coming and wait for it, ready to dig more canals.

Maybe saving was never the point.

They don’t see a start-to-finish project. It’s an on-going discovery. Whatever the moment has to give them, it gives it while happening.

They don’t need to name it.

They don’t need to explain it.

They don’t need to give it a purpose.

The purpose is in the moment.

The moment is the purpose is the point. The moment is the point.

There’s no point and all of it is the point.

The kids remind me that all this is play.

Everything is safe. Everyone is safe. It can collapse, it can go wrong, it can flood. The stakes are zero.

That’s why I can laugh, too.

When it’s washed off it’s either swimming or going back home for lunch. No one’s hurt.

I can fully enjoy it like I was a kid myself.

I don’t have to care or guess or predict.

I can build and rebuild and adapt as the waves are coming. I can let parts collapse.

I can dig the wrong canals, bring water back to the towers, see what happens when they flood.

Watch them flooding.

I can make as many mistakes as ever possible. I can take full responsibility because no one pays any cost.

Is that why you stayed fifteen years with the wrong person, giving life to a house made of cardboard posts?

I didn’t know what it was made of when I walked in.

You found out soon enough.

The sandcastles builders see only the sand.

When I saw the cardboard I looked away.

My marriage was cardboard.

I stayed.

And then I left.

I took the cradles and the plants and the twinkle lights and all stuffed toys and life from the mud.

I didn’t let life to end.

Life is sand. No. Motherhood is the sand. No. Motherhood became the sand.

Or everything is sand. Or nothing is the sand. You don’t have to name it.

Childhood is a sandcastle.

Then build it.

Life is a wave.

No. Time is a wave.

I keep my hands in the sand.

“Bring more sticks for those towers”, I tell them.

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We Are Meant to Build Sandcastles All Along was originally published in Infinite Impulse on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.