There are few heavy hearts that an hour building sand castles won't make lighter.
From Before We Were Young, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
A woman came down to the lake this morning with a face I have seen on people who have been up since three. She sat on the sand doing nothing for a long while, and then her boy put a bucket in her hands, and she filled it, and packed it, and turned it over, and they built a lopsided thing with a moat for an hour. By the end she was arguing with him about where the gate went. I used to think grief wanted stillness, that the decent thing was to sit with it and let it finish saying what it came to say; I sat with plenty of my own and it never once finished. There are few heavy hearts that an hour building sand castles won't make lighter. She left the castle standing and the lake came up for it in the afternoon, and I do not know whether that is part of it or not.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
