A Few More Minutes, a Few More Years by Laura J. Oliver

A trip always starts days before departure, with setting aside clothes to keep clean and making lists of what you can’t live without for a week.

This is especially true as I pack to meet my family on North Carolina’s Outer Banks because someone is coming to stay with the dog. That means the fridge must be cleaned out, all the bathrooms scrubbed, and the sheets changed before the start of the seven-hour drive. 

Are we having fun yet?

But the real question is, will this time of gathering—of being with my three adult kids whom I rarely see in the same room at the same time because they live on different continents– fill the ache in my heart that can only be filled by time with your children?  

You can’t burden them with this need, so you pack it with your sunscreen and hope your children’s children will take home memories of this week that will inspire them to carry on this tradition when they are grown. 

We grill together, catch snatches of conversation on the breezy beach, and as our vacation nears its end, I go into town. At Carolina Moon I make four purchases—then I tell my kids’ kids, ages 8-13, to meet me on the lower bunk in the room they are sharing. The baby is off with her mother. 

We gather cross-legged on the mattress, and the bunk above us creates a cave. Only the oldest has to duck a bit. He sits on the edge of the mattress.

Once upon a time, four cousins who barely knew each other met at the ocean, I tell them. They built sandcastles, performed stunts in the pool, and learned to surf. One evening, they went out to chase sand crabs, watching them scuttle to and from their holes, like papery ghosts. 

The only girl, who was 10, found the spidery crabs a bit scary, but the younger boys, 8 and 9, shouted with excitement and chased after them with flashlights. It was the oldest cousin, already a teen, who noticed the first star of the evening appear, pinning the darkening blue curtain of night to the sky.

As the sun left with a blush for the far side of the world, the children decided they would each make a wish, and with each wish, the star grew brighter, its light more intense. Although the moon was full, she reached out to help hold onto those wishes, but it was too late; the star fell from the sky in a shining ribbon of light and disappeared into the sea.

The cousins trudged over the dark, dry sand to the house, thinking this must mean the end of their wishes, but the next day, as they ran along the outgoing tide looking for shells, the little girl saw a shape under the wet sand. The younger boys fell to their knees and started digging, and in a few minutes, they had exposed three beautiful discs — shells like the moon that had watched their star fall, shells that fit in the palms of their hands. 

As they rinsed them in the waves, a delicate design appeared on each, like a flower.

“No!” said the youngest, “It’s a star!” 

They were writing their names in the sand with a piece of driftwood when, out of nowhere, an old man appeared. His face was lined and weathered. He wore tan cargo shorts, a T-shirt as blue as the waves, and he was barefoot. 

“Did you see a star fall last night?” he asked. “I’ve been looking for it everywhere.”

The cousins exclaimed that they had seen it, too! Then they showed him the shells with the star pattern.

“You found it!” he exclaimed. “When a star falls in the ocean, it becomes sand dollars.”

“Can I buy something with mine?” the youngest asked. He was saving up to buy a hoverboard. 

“Yes,” said the old man. “If you break your shell open, you will find little stars inside—and each one can be spent on a wish.”

There are stars inside? The kids looked dubious. Could they trust that if they broke open the only star that they held, they would find more? Then the same thought dawned on each of them as they looked at their quiet, oldest cousin, the one who had not found a sand dollar of his own but had been quietly happy for them. 

“Can I give my wishes to my brother?” the little girl asked. 

“Can we?” his cousins chimed in.

“You don’t need to,” the old man said with a smile. He reached into his pocket and handed the oldest cousin a perfect white starfish, ready to be wished upon. The children gasped at its beauty, and when they looked up to say thank you, the old man was gone. Not even a footprint to prove he’d been there.  

Finishing my tale, I have a wish of my own–that we stay in our story-cave a few more minutes.

That we stay just like this, a few more years. 

I hand the children three sand dollars and a starfish, and the youngest demands to know, as we roll off the mattress, if the story is true. His blue eyes are very round and guileless. Do stars that fall into the sea really become sand dollars? Are there truly wishes inside? 

We are knee to knee, elbow-to-elbow, laughing under the same sun, and for just this moment, under the same heaven. Upstairs, their parents, who were kids just like them only a second ago, play the guitar, set the table, and pull lasagna from the oven. 

I don’t know what the other kids do with their shells, or if we will ever come back to the ocean. I don’t know how many years it may be before we are together again, or if the children will even remember this time or this story. But while I am having a glass of wine before dinner, I see my youngest grandson give his beautiful mother, my firstborn of three, half of a broken sand dollar. 

I watch as he gestures his emphatic request that she help him take home the universe of stars he has found inside.