The salty tears of the ocean pounded the sandy shore as seagulls and other birds of the ocean looked on in wonder.  The merciless waves were beautiful and wonderful to them, both mysterious and magical.  A particularly old sandpiper who had spent many years searching for small animals beneath the shore and was ready to die watched the waves with a certain meditation that almost led Karie to believe the bird was human (being the naive seven-year-old that she was).  This sandpiper having been noted, as in an inventory taken with exceptional scrutiny, and the perfectly cloudless blue sky also being accounted for, Karie picked up a handful of sand and immediately realized the architectural potential.

Karie first enlisted the help of her mother for the sand castle endeavor, and then her father, who had been lying on his back on the blanket with a shirt over his face to shield his eyes from the sun.  The work for the two parents began immediately, while Karie went off with the crisp self-assurance of a military recruiter to gain the help of her eleven-year-old sister, who waved Karie away for interrupting her swin.  After a brief fit of crying and pleading, Karie returned to the construction site to sit in the wet sand and help her father dig out the moat.

Karie was still working, long after her entire family had gone out into the ocean together.  When her mother came back, hair dripping and face pink with sunburn, surprise registered on her face.  Far from what she had expected, Karie had built her beautiful masterpiece outside the castle fortifications and carefully prepared moat, seemingly by some seven-year-old folly or another.  Gently, her mother asked, “Why did you build your castle in front of the moat?  You’re supposed to build is behind, silly, so that the waves don’t ruin it.”

Still bending down, absorbed in her seashell-decorating work, Karie replied, “But it’s a welcome center for the waves.”

Realizing that this may be more complicated than it had initially appeared, Karie’s mother sat down in the sand next to her younger daugher to say, “But if you had built it behind the moat, it could have welcomed the waves longer with being destroyed.”

“The welcome center needs to be close to the waves,” Karie mumbled.  Her mother only shook her head sadly and walked away.

Later on, while Karie was adorning her pile of sand with long, thin strips of seaweed, her father walked over in curiosity.  “I see you’ve built your castle in front of the moat, instead of behind it,” he said, laughing heartily like it was the funniest joke on Earth.  “You know, the tide is going to rise after we leave, the waves are going to come closer, and eventually the waves are going to wash right over the castle and all your hard work is going to be washed away.  Now, if you build something behind the moat we dug out for you, then the water will just wash into the moat, and the castle might even last until tomorrow.”

Karie answered, “I don’t want it to be behind the moat.”  Karie’s father just shrugged at his wife, who had been secretly observing the exchange from behind her sunglasses, and went to sit down on the blanket to make sure his elder daughter didn’t drown in the ocean.

When the sun was finally setting, Karie’s entire family (including both parents and her sister) gathered around the sand castle (which was finally finished) and Karie, who beamed with pride.  Karie insisted for a final time, “It’s a welcome center for the ocean.  It doesn’t care if it gets crushed, because it needs to do its job.”

Each of Karie’s family members, in turn, shrugged one last time while Karie’s father asked the ocean that waved salt and bits of coral in the air, “Who ever taught her what a welcome center is, anyhow?”

The ocean sprayed its salty tears over the face of Karie and her welcome center as Karie smiled, skipping back to the beach house with her family.