With the unofficial start of summer finally here, I would like to share this cautionary tale of love and loss.  It happened in 2016, when my summer romance took a sad and tragic turn.  So there we were enjoying a beautiful day at the beach.  The sun was shining.  The waves were crashing.  The smell of sand and suntan lotion wafting through the air.  The type of day that inspires poets to write sonnets!  We were even lucky enough to have the beach to ourselves.  Plenty of room to stretch our legs and enjoy a good game of fetch…but then the day took a dramatic turn.

Seriously, I turned my back on Asa for five seconds to chase a seagull, only to return and see his fluffy bottom sticking straight up in the sand!  At first I thought Asa found pirate treasure.  Even Mom was hopeful and commented, “perhaps our Golden Retriever is finally retrieving gold.”

But no such luck.  Asa was burying my tennis ball!  This isn’t the first time he’s buried my toy.  But this beach proved different than the others.  The sand was not packed down from the outgoing tide.  Instead it was soft and perfect for digging deep holes.  The perfect storm for hiding my precious ball.  I immediately sprung into action to rescue it!

Trying to be helpful, Asa “accidentally” collapsed the hole, and then proceeded to half heartedly continue digging.  Soon he was distracted and wandered off.  However, that ball was too precious to me to abandon it in a sandy grave!  I continued digging.

As I dug, a montage of memories flooded my brain of all the fun times I’ve had with that tennis ball.  We played together for almost two weeks!  Even Dad jumped into action to help search for my buried treasure.  But to no avail.  The sand kept closing in around our efforts concealing it’s victim from our grasp.

After hours of digging…ok, so maybe it was more like 15 minutes…I gave up my search and headed off to play in the water.  No big deal.  I have plenty of tennis balls at home.  But if you happen to be digging at Old Orchard Beach this summer and uncover my beloved tennis ball, could you please let me know it’s ok?  Thanks!

[Editor’s Note: Not sure why the photos are appearing twice. ASA! Stop messing with my blog!!!]