🪺Finding Old Words, Adding New Layers
🪺 Glimmer Nest - Stories of Resilience, Strategies for Thriving
🪣 25 Years in the Sand
A little departure from the norm. I found this poem tucked in an old notebook the other day—something I wrote in 1995 during a creative writing course in college. Reading it now, thirty years later, I realized it wasn't finished. Life has added so many more layers to my sandbox since then. Below is the original followed by what I'd add today.
Hope you get some time to play in the sand this summer!
SANDBOX (1995)
An elderly, rusted dump truck
Reclines lazily on its back,
Wheels facing the sky.
A pail and shovel keep it company,
A deflated ball,
A few scattered tinker toys.
There they lie,
Days and days on end,
Paint chipping, metal rusting.
The wind blows.
The sand shifts.
And a miniature sand storm
Buries plastic memories
Under mountains of sand.
I hurry past.
Late for a date,
Bigger sandbox,
Newer toys,
Better sand.
I kick at the grains,
Walk away.
I used to bother with Smaller trifles.
I almost miss the few grains
That slide away,
And leave one rusted wheel
Still trying to touch the sky.
SANDBOX (Thirty Years Later)
But sometimes you circle back
To the same patch of sand,
Older now, carrying different tools—
Twenty years of other people's stories
Catalogued and shelved,
A marriage that taught me
What I wouldn't settle for,
And hands that learned
To build again.
The library years:
Neat rows of possibilities I wasn't allowed to touch,
Playing by rules
Written in someone else's hand,
Climbing ladders that led
To smaller and smaller boxes
Until I forgot I had wings.
First marriage like a broken bucket—
Looked sturdy from a distance
But couldn't hold water
When it mattered.
I kept pouring myself in
Until there was nothing left
But rust stains On borrowed sand.
Now there's a new shovel beside me,
One that remembers
My favorite songs
When I forget the words.
He sees the dump truck
And calls it resilient,
Sees my wheels spinning skyward
And says I'm reaching
For exactly the right things.
The career shift:
Trading card catalogs
For helping others
Find their voice,
Giving voice to the voiceless—
My son's autism
Teaching me that sometimes
The most important stories
Don't fit on any shelf.
These days I am the sandbox keeper,
Watching other dreamers
Dig for buried treasure.
Some find coaching calls,
Others uncover content
That changes everything.
All of them learning
What I learned in the sand:
You can lose yourself
In someone else's blueprints,
Or you can grab a shovel
And start building
Your own small corner
Of sky.
The storms still come.
Dissociation.
Burnout.
Nights when I forget
My own name
But he reminds me—
I am the dancing girl
Who thought she couldn't parent,
Who discovered she could raise
A magnificent boy
Who sees the world
In colors I'm still learning.
The rusted wheel keeps reaching.
The sand keeps shifting.
And somewhere between
What I used to be
And who I'm becoming,
I've learned that resilience
Isn't about perfect toys
Or pristine sand.
It's about building something beautiful
From whatever the storms
Leave behind,
And teaching my son
That wheels facing skyward
Aren't broken—
They're just reaching
For bigger dreams.
I don't hurry past anymore.
I sit in the sand,
Let it slip through my fingers,
And remember:
Even rusted trucks
Can touch the sky.
But these days I've traded the sandbox
For something bigger—
Carolina coastline
Stretching endlessly,
Where the sand never stops
Shifting and reshaping.
Here, my toes sink deep
Into grains that hold
Stories from across oceans,
And I finally understand:
The sandbox was just practice
For this vast shore
Where every wave
Brings new possibilities
To build upon.
The boy who taught me
That wheels facing skyward
Aren't broken—
They're just reaching
For bigger dreams—
He runs beside me now,
Collecting shells
And teaching me
That some storms
Don't bury treasure,
They deliver it
Right to your feet.
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