The beach is the orphan’s home.
The very old and the very young claim the beach as their own. So do the philosophers, the body builders, the volleyball players, the sunbathers, the poets, and the drunks.
Rednecks and DINKS and scientists and Christians and families and tragic people who have lost everything gather at the beach to play in the sand and stare at the water.
Old people stroll on the beach with their yippy dogs, really old people nap in beach chairs, teenagers play volleyball, kids build sand kingdoms and water slides, groups of girlfriends in their 50s take long walks.
Saying you love the beach is a little like saying you love Jimmy Fallon. So does everyone else. During the summer, Galveston’s beaches are a riotous mix of every type of person.
This past weekend, our beach house wasn’t rented so we drove down to the island. We had seen in the news that Galveston was covered in seaweed so we expected the beach to be more crowded with sargassum than beachcombers.
We did not expect to find the huge mountains of seaweed, though. The beaches were black with the stuff. Stinking seaweed covered every part of the beach. Old piles rotted on the shore while floating seaweed islands washed up on the beach.
We stared at each other and the beach. This was not a seaweed inconvenience; this was a seaweed invasion.
Our family surveyed the unthinkable amount of seaweed and tried to figure out what to do next. Other beach lovers were asking themselves these same questions: can we relax among giant piles of decaying weeds? Is the beach still the beach when the ocean has thrown up its guts all over the sand? Are we hardcore enough to stay at the beach even when it’s….gross?
While we thought, the seagulls partied in the seaweed. They cawed and screamed and filled their fat bellies with all the shrimp and fish trapped in the weeds.
For all the different families who had gathered at the beach that morning, each had their own solution about how to handle the seaweed. Some frowned at the mess, then headed home. Others set up their tents and chairs and coolers and ignored the decomposition surrounding them. Some gossiped and complained. Others tweeted about the mess.
A few families had come prepared with hoes and shovels and rakes. They attacked the seaweed. Other beach lovers grabbed their kids’ shovels and got to work clearing paths in the sea of weeds. They held their noses and pushed the stinky stuff aside. Their kids found buckets of fresh sand to pave the path their parents were carving out of the sea gunk.
Alongside these other families, we also used our kids’ shovels to clear a path. Then we set up our chairs and sea gazed while the kids used the path to run back and forth to the waves.
It all seemed like the perfect metaphor for life: when the beach gives you seaweed, make a path through it.
And when you do, you’ll discover something beautiful.
In the seaweed piles, the kids found beautiful, silver fish. For hours they joined the seagulls in hunting for these exotic, slippery silverfish.
This, too, was just like life. Among the tangled mess of decay, there was beauty to be found, if only you really looked. 
