Last weekend my family and I went to
Tybee Island. Tybee is a small island
along the small coast of Georgia. I've known
of Tybee Island for many years but had never
been there. I'd heard that it was less built up,
less trendy than many beaches.

It was good to go with our children, who'd
asked for us to go to the beach. At 17 and
19 years old, I think the occasions when
our children will want to accompany us on
vacations are dwindling and since we had
not been able to take our customary week
at SUUSI (Southeastern Unitarian Universalist
Institute) this year, in Blacksburg Virginia,
going to the beach, just the four of us, seemed
like a good occasion to be with each other for a few days.

We rented a small cottage, only a block
from the beach. It was hot as blue blazes
at Tybee last weekend, as I suppose it was
over much of the country. But our little
cottage was just right, nicely appointed
with all the necessary comforts, including
a lovely screened porch with rocking chairs
and a picnic table, as well as overhead fans.
The owners of the cottage had even thought
to supply their guests with beach chairs and
sand toys and umbrella and cart to haul
those necessities to the beach.

We spent as much time there as we could
manage and Roxanne got a surfboard sort of thing
and was able to manage to ride the waves in,
if not standing on the board then apparently
joyfully skimming the water with her body and
her board, in her own way.

Tybee Island is a rather ordinary place, only
modestly built up, with junky little shops in
its junky little downtown, the shabbiness
and ordinariness of it appealing to me. It is
not a place trying to put on airs, as it were.

Last Sunday, I awakened fairly early and
decided to take a walk along the beach
alone. I knew we'd be heading home in a
few hours and the solitude of an early
walk beckoned. The sun was up, the surf
skidding in, dolphins feeding not far from
shore and very few people, though the sun was up.

As I walked down the beach, I could see a
woman sitting on the sand, working on a
sand construction. Her clothing, even at a
distance, was distinctive compared to usual beach attire.
She appeared to be wearing a black sari. I could see a length
of fabric blowing in the wind. And I assumed
she was probably an Indian woman. As I got closer,
I could see that she was working on a sand creation
but that it was not a sand castle as seems to be
customary for people at the beach to build. She
was making what I recognized to be a Hindu temple. So
there she sat, in what I thought was a sari,
stitched with golden colored threads in a vine pattern,
working and smiling. Her buildings seemed familiar,
as if I'd seen them in books before and when I got
home, I looked up Hindu temples on the internet. The
one that seemed closest to what she was constructing
is known as the Lingaraja Temple. I walked past several
times over the next hour or two, to see her
progress. The final temple complex had three
buildings inside a sand wall she'd constructed. One
of the buildings was tall, flanked by two smaller
versions of that. Each was conical, but rounded at
the tip, which was topped by a shape that might be
thought of to look a little like a hat. There was an
arched entrance to the temple complex and within
the courtyard she'd fashioned three egg-like shapes
that were put together in such a way that it looked a
little like a cluster of leaves, with a round ball of sand
where the three shapes joined. She actually made
two of these objects, one in front of either of the
shorter conical buildings. The main building itself
had a rectangular opening one would be able to
walk through, if it were a full-scale building. Outside
the walls of the complex she created there was
another dome-like shape surrounded by a line
she'd drawn in the sand, in a form I recognized. I
could see that what she'd created in the sand was a
yoni-lingam. That's what would normally be inside
the main building of the temple and would be
adorned with flower petals or perhaps colorful spices.

Later, after the temple was complete, I saw the
same woman, in her sari-like clothing, in the
incoming waves, that length of fabric waving
in the strong breeze.

I was so fascinated by her Hindu temple in the
sand. I think all I've ever seen at the beach were
sand castles or maybe some other sand construction.
I wondered if it is usual, in India, to make temples
at the beach, or just something that particular
woman does when she plays in the sand. And I
thought about the fact that here it is usually castles.
It seemed a funny contrast, too. Castles were or still are,
I suppose, symbols of political power and wealth. And
I suppose to some extent castles have a kind of
romantic appeal, perhaps conjuring ideas about
chivalry and knights and such. Seemed a funny contrast
to the woman's creation of a place of worship.

The rest of our trip home was done at a leisurely pace.
We drove into Savannah, with no particular place in mind
and no map of the city, looking for some suitable place
to each. We happened across a place called Firefly Cafe,
at Troup Square, I think, that had outdoor cafe
tables and was serving brunch. We stopped there
because it looked so inviting and dined at one
of the outdoor tables. The food was marvelous and
as it turned out, apparently it is one of the best
places for brunch in Savannah, at least according to
a local magazine article that was posted on their
wall inside. Ellen pointed out the bag of ice tethered
underneath the umbrella that shaded out table. She'd
heard it was supposed to help keep away flies, which it
did not, but even the flies did not dampen our
enthusiasm for the pleasant location and the good
food, though it did make me wonder if Fly Cafe
might have been a better name for the place.

Nina