story writing. One sunny day , I was going ............
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when i saw The sun beat down on Mama’s body as she sprawled out on the towel. One arm rested upon her forehead to shield her eyes from the glare, and the other stretched outward onto the sand. She inhaled the salty air and reveled in its odd aroma. Fish and brine, but somehow sweet. Digging with fingertips into the earth, she picked up a handful and held it in her palm. Squeezing tightly, she watched the tiny grains slip through the cracks between her fingers. Mama squinted to her left and smiled. Rosie, her youngest of three, sat at her side. The little girl drew pictures in the sand and giggled. It was her first trip to the beach.
“Mummy!” Rosie laughed when Mama picked her up. She pointed toward the ocean. “Water!”
Just then, a gust of wind tugged dangerously at the nearby umbrella. The blue fabric ballooned upward, threatening to uproot the metal pole from the center of the picnic table. Mama’s two sisters shrieked loudly as they jumped up from their beach chairs to secure it.
“Can you believe this?” They chattered back and forth, trying to remember whose idea it was to come. “I told you! I knew the sky was looking heavy. I said it, didn’t I? A whole day’s drive to the shore for just an hour of sunshine!”
The sisters babbled on while the sun disappeared behind the darkening sky. Mama called out to her other two children. “Jeffrey! Karen! Kids, it’s time to go!”
They didn’t even look up. Mama’s delicate voice had been swallowed up whole by the echoing of crashing waves. The children stood with feet planted firmly in the sand and noses buried deep in their comic books, holding firmly to the moisture-curled pages that flapped in the wind. Mama set Rosie down again and waved her hands to get their attention. Within moments, the clouds broke, awakening the children from their fantasy worlds. They spotted the umbrella and fled for shelter from the rain.
Arriving at the covered picnic table, Jeffrey and Karen both reached for their half-empty Coke bottles. The sugary sodas had long since lost their carbonation, and the contents had already warmed considerably, but they didn’t mind at all. They gargled it like mouthwash. After guzzling down the remaining liquid, they laughed and made music by blowing into the glass.
Mama turned to pick up her bag. Her insides fluttered. Rosie! Her spot by the towel was now vacant save her tiny pictures in the sand. She was gone. In the chaos of the oncoming storm, no one had even noticed that little Rosie had run down to the water. She was only two. The poor girl hadn’t yet learned to swim. Mama’s head flashed toward the ocean just in time to spot tiny blond curls disappear below the murky water.
“ROSIEEE!” Mama screeched, so loudly this time that her voice cut through the roaring winds. Everyone chased after her as she scrambled down the beach, stumbling and crawling toward the ocean. Diving into the icy water, Mama felt her chest go tight. She couldn’t feel her face. She tried to open her eyes but still saw nothing. Everything was black. She desperately lunged in one direction and then another, hands grasping at nothing, lungs coughing up seawater when she came up for air. Minutes passed. She searched the surface of the crashing waves, but her sweet baby was gone. She wailed in agony, face to the sky and cursing at clouds. “She was right there.” At first she screamed it. Then she just said it. Repeated it slowly, her voice softening to a whisper and soon just mouthing the words.
After being pulled to the shore, Mama sat still, unthinking. When the others ran for help, she just stayed there and hugged her knees against her chest. The rain progressed. Sharp droplets pelted her face but she didn’t even blink. She couldn’t even feel them. It felt like hours passed before someone finally came and got her. How had this happened? Her little girl had somehow slipped through her fingertips just like the sand.
Months passed and not much changed. One day, Mama went into the bedroom and didn’t come out. Papa found her on the floor with an empty bottle of painkillers. Her eyes hid somewhere back in her head, unseeing. “How quickly life can turn on us,” Mama had mumbled during dinner that night, staring out the kitchen window into the blackness outside. “Like a sunny day at the beach.”OH! and forgot to tell you, it was all a movie