“Is this a bowl of…?” moldy tofu?”
I hold at arm’s length the cubes of green hair my 17-year-old daughter had left in our refrigerator and frown at her as she scrolls on her phone, surrounded by piles of clothes in various states of cleanliness.
“That is intolerable!” I said and stormed out of his room.
My friend Mary, whose children are in their 20s, likes to remind me that my daughter's brain is still growing and that when it is fully developed, her cognitive skills will include the ability to put away laundry without needing repeated reminders.
I get it, but as I toss the fuzzy tofu into the compost bin, I mutter, “It's never going to ripen.”
Next month, we're visiting Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California. Our daughter reluctantly leaves her phone in the rental car and follows my husband and me to the ocean. My family thrives on the beach. We often travel to study tide pools, hiking miles of windy, cold beaches.
I assume my daughter is heading to a rocky outcrop to look for starfish and anemones, but when I turn around, she's carrying a large trash bag in one hand and is picking up colorful bits of sand.
“Microplastics,” she explains when I approach her. “That is simply intolerable!”
I shouldn't be as surprised as I am. Throughout its life, we have done beach cleanups with the Oregon nonprofit SOLVE and helped create giant, extravagant sculptures from beach trash with the Dragged to the shore pprojectMy daughter dropped out of high school two years early to study marine biology at community college. I have to beg her to clean the cat litter boxes, the chicken coop, her backpack. But then she pushes an abandoned bucket toward me, and I try to untangle an empty water bottle from the algae.
We make our way down the beach, the three of us, silently bending down to pick up glass and plastic of every imaginable colour and fill our bags. People look at us as they pass, some probably thinking: “That’s all well and good, but tomorrow the tide will bring in a new batch of rubbish.”
I know this too, but I remember a story my husband told me about a little boy who found hundreds of starfish washed up on a beach and started throwing them, one by one, back into the ocean.
“You will never be able to save them all!” an adult tells the child. “Your efforts don’t matter.”
The boy simply picks up another five-armed creature. “My efforts matter to me. this “Starfish,” he says, and throws it into the ocean.
An hour into our unplanned cleanup, I discover the piece de resistance: a naked, black-haired baby doll perched on the edge of a sand dune looking out to sea.
“Moana!” I yell and introduce her to my daughter, who rolls her eyes.
“It’s ridiculous,” he says. “But we should take it with us. We don’t want a whale to drown with it.”
As we walk back to the car with our trash, I can’t blame people for staring. I have a bulging plastic bag and a naked wrist. A giant piece of fencing threatens to swallow my husband. Our daughter carries her trash bag and bucket as she tries to roll a car tire down the sandy path. We deposit trash in bins at the trailhead — bins I hadn’t noticed when we began our hike, but which my teenager had recorded along with the sign urging visitors to help clean up the beach.
I'm often tempted to shake my head at my daughter's smartphone addiction, but she spends much of her time with her device learning about environmental issues. Many young people are madly in love with the Earth; don't let anyone tell you otherwise. We live in the city that gave birth to The trust of our childrenthe nonprofit law firm that helps children around the world fight for climate security. More and more Universities are creating programs on climate change To meet the demands of new students, my daughter hopes to become a maritime activist and work on a ship to help protect whales from underwater fishing.
We drive back to our hotel, Moana sitting on the dashboard. My husband takes my hand and smiles at our daughter through the rearview mirror. “We should go clean another beach next weekend,” he says.
“Okay,” I reply. “From now on, I’ll be carrying a garbage bag with me.”
“And gloves,” my husband adds.
Our daughter is fine, better than fine, but I still can't let her eat a plate of moldy tofu. It's just intolerable.
Melissa Hart is a writer in Eugene, Oregon. Her most recent book is “Better With Books: 500 Diverse Books to Ignite Empathy and Encourage Self-Acceptance in Tweens and Teens.”
