The construction went amazingly well. I can say this because Jon was in charge, including the part where he got out a pickax to level the spot of yard we’d chosen to host our new addition. Owen was hovering around the whole time, inquiring when it would be ready. As soon as it was done (and a few times before it was done), he jumped in. Our fearless Nora, surprisingly, took a little coaxing. But she too, quickly caught on, and before we knew it, was piling sand into a bucket while Owen served us sand “pizza.”
Watching the kids play in this little sanctuary of dirt made me think back to my own sandbox days. Growing up in the middle of sand country, we had huge piles of it on our property. That, in addition to a sand "box” that was made from a large tractor tire. My brother and I spent hours playing in the sand. It was our playground, our place to create and destroy whatever we wanted.
Seeing Owen and Nora immediately take to the sand confirms the tight association between childhood and sandboxes. Swings, crayons, sandboxes -- these are all metaphoric stand-ins for youth. A sandbox is limitless possibilities. It's the outdoor equivalent of Play-doh. It comes in a blob, but then you make it into whatever you want.
Now that I'm on the other side of that generational arc, I’m loving what this simple wooden perimeter provides ME. Namely, the ability to get in a little planting, weeding, watering and relaxing without having to chase after the kids every 5 minutes as they run down the driveway toward the street. I'm also realizing that one thing I never noticed as a kid was how much sand gets tracked into the house.
Ah, childhood.
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