Feeling sand between my toes

This week I’ve walked on the soft, white sand of Pensacola Beach and stared out at the deep blue and aqua waters of the Gulf. I’ve relaxed, breathed in the ocean breezes. Watched sandpipers race the tide.

Bali in 1964

My first memory of feeling sand between my toes was a 1964 family vacation in Bali. We loaded up our 1958 Chevrolet station wagon in Surabaya early in the morning and drove across East Java to the ferry at Ketapang, just north of Banyuwangi. 

The leaving at 4 a.m. was due in part to tropical heat and humidity in pre-air-conditioning travel. I loved leaving in the dark and relished the sights outside my window, leaning back to stare at the stars bright in the night sky, trying to find the constellations and call out their names. 

Before long there was a never-ending panorama outside my car window as somewhat empty streets came to life. Women walked to the open market to purchase their daily supply of fruit and vegetables and rice. Men balanced baskets of produce on carrying poles, their heavy loads bouncing with a rhythm as they walked. Children dressed neatly in school uniforms made their way to school. Bicycles and becaks [3-wheeled pedicabs] were still the main vehicles on the roads as we headed out of town. 

No small task

It was no small task for my parents to plan this vacation. They carried jugs of drinking water that had been properly boiled and a small kerosene stove so that we could boil more once we arrived.  Mom packed boxes of food supplies, including cans of cheese and spam, loaves of bread. We caravanned with our friends, the Griffin family, and would pull over to stretch and drink cold water from the thermos, taking bathroom breaks behind roadside bushes. Gas stations with public toilets would arrive in the distant future after I left for college. 

Never a dull moment

Our travel took us over bumpy roads past miles and miles of rice paddies with small villages tucked in between, shaded by bamboo or palm trees. Sometimes we slowed behind an oxcart loaded with sugarcane or kapok. Or we stopped and waited at the railroad crossing until the train passed, then a man swung the crossing gates out and both sides flooded across.  Somehow all those bicycles and oxcarts and cars and trucks filtered between, around and through oncoming traffic.  

There was never a dull moment in these travels of my childhood on those roads. And while the smoothness and speed of interstate travel in the United States were appealing to drivers, the sameness of mile after interstate mile seemed boring to me during our furloughs in America. Outside my car window in Indonesia, I saw water buffalo, ducks, chickens, and goats. I watched myriads of people involved in a variety of activities—from planting rice to drying chili peppers to washing clothes or bathing in the river.

Roadblock 

We reached Ketapang after noon, then the ferry ride from Java to Gilimanuk, Bali, was a breezy 45 minutes or so.  We drove off the ferry and headed toward Denpasar and Kuta Beach where we would stay. The traffic felt sparse compared to Java and it was on a quiet road that we came to a halt around dusk. 

A huge coconut palm tree had fallen across the road and there was no way around it. Dad and Uncle Clarence Griffin got out to examine the situation and discovered the tree was heavy and covered with red stinging ants. We children played games in the road while the adults sat and waited, wondering what to do.  

After dark, a busload of young people pulled up. They all piled out and together pushed the tree off the road.  They were smiling and chatting, and brushing off the red ants as they walked back by our car to board the bus.  

Kuta Beach in the 1960s

We arrived late that night at our hotel, the only one on Kuta Beach at the time. It was a group of beach cottages and I lay on the kapok mattress under the mosquito net, wondering if waves were going to come right into the room and up to my bed. We couldn’t see the ocean because it was so dark, but we could hear it loud and clear. 

The next morning I saw for the first time the huge waves that would make Kuta Beach a surfer’s destination in the years to come. I walked out on the beautiful sand that stretched as far as I could see. We were the only tourists there that week and saw only an occasional vendor on the beach. 

World events and crashing waves

My dad remembers we had no radio in Bali and didn’t find out until we returned home that several major world events had taken place that very week, including China becoming the world’s fifth nuclear power and Brezhnev replacing Khrushchev as the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. 

In my 6-year-old world, that news didn’t have any impact.

No, I remember the warm sand and the deafening sound of crashing waves. I remember finding sand dollars and shells, more than my hands could carry. I remember watching small crabs race here and there, digging quickly into the sand as we approached and leaving holes that bubbled when the waves moved in then receded. 

Sand between my toes

In 1964 I felt the sand between my toes, and in these days of adult responsibilities and never-ending major world events at my fingertips, I recall those carefree days in the loud solitude of ocean waves. 

And my husband knows that sometimes I just need to walk on a beach and stare at the horizon and breathe. And find a shell or two.  

“Mightier than the thunders of many waters,
mightier than the waves of the sea,
The Lord on high is mighty!”
Psalm 93:4 ESV