My family spent a great deal of time at the beach when I was growing up, a sandy, dunes-style beach on Lake Michigan’s eastern shore. Mom was untiring in her efforts to make sure we had fun there. “The more the merrier” was a motto she embraced, which meant we could invite all the friends we wanted, whether for a day or a week. She never complained about youthful crowds. To the contrary, she was energized by them.

After we arrived at the beach with our big, black, truck inner-tubes (the kind that rubbed black onto our bathing suits), Mom was always first into the water, teaching visitors to stand on their heads by going under without holding their noses. She made her shoulders available for kids nearly as big as she was to jump from. She raced us all to the anchored raft “out deep” where no one could touch bottom.

Mom never brought a magazine or a book to the beach. Her first choice was to play with children. One of the beach games Mom loved was “Cut the Cake.” Using a bucket for a mold, she turned out a cake of wet sand that was perfectly round. “Go find stones to decorate it,” she directed, “and bring something for the middle, a feather, a stick, whatever you want to make it pretty.”

We “sugared it” with the soft, dry sand and then stood back to admire our work. “Now,” she said, “we’re going to cut the cake.” With a thin stick found in the dunes nearby, she demonstrated what she meant by slicing a piece of sand-cake thin enough not to disturb the rest of it.

Handing the stick-knife to the nearest child, she said, “Your turn. If the cake falls when you slice it, you have to run up and down the dunes five times (or run into the water and stay under 30 seconds, or carry someone on your back anywhere they want to go, etc).

Each person took turns slicing a tiny bit more of the cake while the sun slowly dried the wet sand, increasing the threat of “a fall.”  At long last, someone’s slice caused the remaining cake to crumble, causing hoots and hollers from those who hadn’t lost the game. Mom always laughed the hardest.

The sands of time ran out for Mom, but she left behind her spirit of fun for our grandkids to enjoy. Last week I taught a child how to make a bucket cake. (Use only wet sand, pack it tight at the bottom, pile sand slightly above the rim, flip it fast). As I watched him struggle to master this “baking” task, I thought of Mom. She left a lofty heritage in many categories, and surely one of them was how to experience joy among children by playing “Cut the Cake.”