my breath gives
out. When I reach a public beach, I slow down.
The children are there, playing in the sand, splashing in the water, immune to the cold. I stop to watch them, amused by the
abandon that comes to them so naturally. Suddenly a small girl bolts from her playmates and races up to me, chattering away.
She is no more than six or seven, and she is carrying a pail filled with seawater. She holds it up so I can see inside. She
is exuberant as only a child can be, and she can barely contain herself as she tells her tale to me, a stranger on the beach.
“I found a crab,” she says, “and the crab is mine. He’ll always be my crab until he dies. When he dies, I’ll find another
crab, and he’ll be mine, too, until he dies.”
I kneel on the sand beside her and watch the crab as he tries to claw his way out of the pail.
“He’s beautiful,” I say. “But maybe he misses his home on the ocean floor.”
“Oh no,” she says, “he belongs to me! He’s my crab and he’ll always be my crab!”
She grabs the pail and races down the beach. I watch her. She sets the pail on the sand and joins her friends, who are dashing
in and out of the surf.
I continue on my way, walking slowly. After a while I settle on the sand, leaning against a log that has washed in from the
sea. I began my jaunt in a joyful mood, but now a disquieting memory, long repressed, rises from my childhood.
I remember playing on a sandy beach when I was a boy, no older than the girl with the crab. I was with my parents and a few
of their friends when suddenly one of the men decided to hold me down on my back. He kept me in that position easily, with
one hand placed firmly on my chest while I tried in vain to wriggle away. I remember he was laughing, and so were the other
adults, as if it were funny, and it wasn’t until I burst out in tears, screaming, that he finally let me up. Now, a half century
later, I still recall the incident and the way that man restrained me, as if he had a perfect right.
On another occasion, I remember my parents putting me in the backseat of the family car, saying we were going to my grandparents’
house. I believed them, for we had made that trip together many times. On the way they stopped in front of a gray building
and led me inside, where I was summarily snatched away by a nurse and stuck in a crib with high bars. I had no warning, no
idea why I was there, and I stood in the crib, kicking and crying, desperate to escape. Eventually an orderly came, strapped
me on a gurney, and wheeled me to an operating room to have my tonsils removed.
I have never quite forgiven my mother or my father for that deception, even though both are long dead. They made a decision
to take the easy way out, the way that was easy for them. But would they have behaved in that insensitive way if they saw
me, not as a child over whom they had absolute power, but as a person—a thinking, feeling individual who had the same qualms,
the same anxieties, the same need for reassurance as they?
I wonder now, as I sit here on this beach, if that is why the girl with the crab affected me so. Of all the evils perpetrated
by man, the one that frightens me most is the possibility of being trapped, of being snatched off the street, of being kidnapped,
taken hostage, and held against my will. What deed is more cowardly than capturing living beings through cunning or brute
strength and confining them in a hostile place for years, perhaps for life?
I saw a snow leopard in a zoo once, and I shall never forget the sight. The curators of the exhibit had created an environment
that came as close as possible to the leopard’s rocky lair in the Himalayas. They had built a circular cage, perhaps a hundred
feet across, and piled boulders against the iron bars to form a lookout and a den.
They had attached a placard to the bars that described the leopard’s way of life on a high range halfway around the
out. When I reach a public beach, I slow down.
The children are there, playing in the sand, splashing in the water, immune to the cold. I stop to watch them, amused by the
abandon that comes to them so naturally. Suddenly a small girl bolts from her playmates and races up to me, chattering away.
She is no more than six or seven, and she is carrying a pail filled with seawater. She holds it up so I can see inside. She
is exuberant as only a child can be, and she can barely contain herself as she tells her tale to me, a stranger on the beach.
“I found a crab,” she says, “and the crab is mine. He’ll always be my crab until he dies. When he dies, I’ll find another
crab, and he’ll be mine, too, until he dies.”
I kneel on the sand beside her and watch the crab as he tries to claw his way out of the pail.
“He’s beautiful,” I say. “But maybe he misses his home on the ocean floor.”
“Oh no,” she says, “he belongs to me! He’s my crab and he’ll always be my crab!”
She grabs the pail and races down the beach. I watch her. She sets the pail on the sand and joins her friends, who are dashing
in and out of the surf.
I continue on my way, walking slowly. After a while I settle on the sand, leaning against a log that has washed in from the
sea. I began my jaunt in a joyful mood, but now a disquieting memory, long repressed, rises from my childhood.
I remember playing on a sandy beach when I was a boy, no older than the girl with the crab. I was with my parents and a few
of their friends when suddenly one of the men decided to hold me down on my back. He kept me in that position easily, with
one hand placed firmly on my chest while I tried in vain to wriggle away. I remember he was laughing, and so were the other
adults, as if it were funny, and it wasn’t until I burst out in tears, screaming, that he finally let me up. Now, a half century
later, I still recall the incident and the way that man restrained me, as if he had a perfect right.
On another occasion, I remember my parents putting me in the backseat of the family car, saying we were going to my grandparents’
house. I believed them, for we had made that trip together many times. On the way they stopped in front of a gray building
and led me inside, where I was summarily snatched away by a nurse and stuck in a crib with high bars. I had no warning, no
idea why I was there, and I stood in the crib, kicking and crying, desperate to escape. Eventually an orderly came, strapped
me on a gurney, and wheeled me to an operating room to have my tonsils removed.
I have never quite forgiven my mother or my father for that deception, even though both are long dead. They made a decision
to take the easy way out, the way that was easy for them. But would they have behaved in that insensitive way if they saw
me, not as a child over whom they had absolute power, but as a person—a thinking, feeling individual who had the same qualms,
the same anxieties, the same need for reassurance as they?
I wonder now, as I sit here on this beach, if that is why the girl with the crab affected me so. Of all the evils perpetrated
by man, the one that frightens me most is the possibility of being trapped, of being snatched off the street, of being kidnapped,
taken hostage, and held against my will. What deed is more cowardly than capturing living beings through cunning or brute
strength and confining them in a hostile place for years, perhaps for life?
I saw a snow leopard in a zoo once, and I shall never forget the sight. The curators of the exhibit had created an environment
that came as close as possible to the leopard’s rocky lair in the Himalayas. They had built a circular cage, perhaps a hundred
feet across, and piled boulders against the iron bars to form a lookout and a den.
They had attached a placard to the bars that described the leopard’s way of life on a high range halfway around the
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