Sandcastle Making and Imaginary Waterparks
My daughter loves the water. When she was little, and we went to visit Grandma and Grandpa up at the lake, she would scamper along Lester Beach, eager to race in for a swim. From the time she could crawl, she would roll around in the cool two-inch-deep water next to the shore, giggling, her face beaming, proud of keeping her head high enough as tiny lapping waves washed over her.
And we would play in the sand.
“Let’s make a sandcastle,” I’d say. And we’d dig and dig, make a big pile, and pat it down, feeling the coolness of the sand as if quarrying marble to carve into a palace fit for kings and queens.
We visited Grand Beach, just a fifteen minute drive away, and they were hosting a major sand castle competition. Nothing like our piles of sands pretending to be fortresses or servants quarters, these were true works of art.
A giant mermaid, a Pepsi can almost as tall as me, a family of penguins, an octopus attacking a pirate ship.
Some of the competitors were putting finishing touches on their creations. Their tools were impressive. Nothing like the plastic bucket and spade and tiny castle molds we had. The pros had full shovels to dig massive amounts of sand and professional trowels to carve and smooth their way to glory.
We marvelled at their designs.
And I couldn’t help but wonder what my daughter might construct if I could teach her proper technique and got her to practice with better tools. My mind went far beyond sand-castle building competitions. Perhaps she’d get interested in how to balance design and weight and become a structural engineer when she grew up. Maybe she’d learn about creating proper lines, and what looks appealing for a building. She could become an architect. And maybe she’d look back on our sandcastle building days and remember how it all started there.
Did I really think all that? I’m not sure I did, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my mind went in that direction.
We returned to Lester Beach. Our beach. Quieter than Grand Beach, smaller, and truly wonderful. We had our regular plastic sand tools, which quite often my daughter would abandon in favour of digging with her little hands.
She always wanted to build right next to the water. Together, we dug moats and big holes which easily filled with the water from the lake. Before we knew it, we had a series of waterways crisscrossing across about six feet of beach.
“It’s a waterpark!” She announced.
I thought we had dug a moat for a new castle.
“That’s the lazy river!”
We had dug a large hole and watched the water fill it.
“Swimming pool.”
A smaller hole.
“Kiddie pool.”
A smaller one still.
“Hot tub!”
She played for a bit in the water park. Was she imagining visitors arriving, getting set up, going for a swim or a float along the lazy river? I didn’t really know. She had created a world. She imagined it, and I got to be there with her in the creation.
I never did teach her better sand-castle building technique. We never got a pro-level trowel. What would have been the point of that? For her to one day win a sand-castle building competition? For her to fine tune skills learned on the beach in the beautiful Manitoba summers and one day become an architect or engineer? Really?
But, this is what we so often do, not just with our children but with ourselves. We think somehow everything needs to be about the next bigger or better thing. We think we need to level up our skills, build capacity, seize opportunity.
Some kids will be drawn to learn new skills, they will want to learn the craft of something, whether it is construction, art, videography, or architecture. Gaining skills should obviously be encouraged but never in a way that limits imagination. Instead, gaining new skills ought to lead to the widening of what is possible, feeding the imagination.
Many people don’t think this way, however. Though you may have had an active imagination as a child, along the way you may have learned to focus on “more important” (i.e. real) things like hard skills, and you left pretending behind. After all, imagination was for kids.
But, if you were taught that, you were duped.
Because sometimes life is all about the joy of digging in the sand and then discovering you are actually at a water park.