Remembrance of Things Past?

The whole clan, very nearly, spent a glorious week in Gulf Shores, enjoying a spectacular house, the gorgeous white sand beach a few steps out our back door, and the wondrous water of the Gulf of Mexico. From the Saturday prior to Memorial Day until the Friday after, we had an incredible week, courtesy of my parents. (All anyone needs to know about my parents: Dad, his sister, and the heirs of their late sisters sold Granny and Granddaddy's farm a few months ago, and he and Mom decided to spend a fair chunk of their part of the proceeds taking all of us on this trip. A lot of people do a lot of lip service to the value of family; my parents have always and invariably put their money where others only put their words.)
Dancing Baby provided a great deal of the entertainment to the whole crowd. My younger niece seemed to have been singled out for particular attention from the 16-month-old. Alie must have heard her named called several million times on this trip, but she never showed anything but good humor and patience with her littlest cousin. DB's uncle has been away at college for most of her life, so she's been a bit hesitant with him. At least prior to the trip. Bubba, as she named him, took her out into the Big Water, where Granddaddy and Grandmommie were only willing to go along the edge of the water. Bubba is now a god on the Dancing Baby scale. So is Emmie, for the same reason. These poor old people who won't venture out, well, DB was patient, but the feelings were clear. Bubba and Emmie are where it's at!
Tacey was the partner for the never-ending "Uh-oh Game." You know the one: the hair band/bracelet/spoon/whatever is at hand is "accidently" dropped, again and again and again and again, with the requisite "Uh-oh" from Dancing Baby, to see how many times the playing partner will pick the darned thing up. Tacey is a very good, very kind, very patient partner for the "Uh-oh Game." Bike-a-Bike (DB's version of Mike-a-Mike, my brother's name since DB's mom was 2 1/2) taught DB how to build sand castles, and that was the least of the challenge. Just getting her to sit down in the sand (she shares her grandfather's aversion to sand) was a major accomplishment! We, and by we I mean DB, fed the deer at the little Gulf Shores Zoo. We looked, unsuccessfully, for alligators along the nature walk; checked out the fish on the walls in all the restaurants; listened to the musicians at the West Beach Grille; had DB's first encounter with flying food at Lambert's Cafe.
It was an utterly delightful week, and something we hadn't all done together since my kids were little.
That was from Saturday to Friday.
On the second Saturday, going home day, we awoke to look out at dark stains on the beach. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill had reached Gulf Shores.
We knew it was coming, and, yes, we hoped it wouldn't arrive until we were gone. But it still hurt my heart to think that Dancing Baby could well be in her mid-teens (at least) before the beaches and the Gulf would look again like they looked during our visit. As little use as I have for sand, the Redneck Riviera has been a big part of our family's life, just as for southerners from all over. And if it is a loss to us, just visitors to the area, what of the people who live there? We had the beach to ourselves on several days of our trip, in the early days of June. I'd never seen that before. People were cancelling trips even before the oil arrived on the beach. Nobody will book now that it has hit.
Will BP pay the waitstaffs who will be laid off when the restaurants close? What about the people hired to clean the rental properties that won't need cleaning? How about the properties that will be foreclosed upon, as there will not be nearly enough income to meet the mortgages? How can the fishermen be made whole? We've all seen the pictures of the pelicans and other creatures who depend on oil-free water to live and thrive. How do we fix that? They can't cash checks.
I don't understand how this happened. And I don't mean the spill. How do we still allow corporations to destroy the world around us, unregulated, unaccountable and unrepentant? Is it alright for the Gulf to be turned into a toilet, with the oil and the chemicals from the dispersants? What of the plumes of oil still underwater and drifting?
I can still see my granddaughter standing at the edge of the Big Water, her face declaring the joy in her heart at seeing such a thing. At least she was spared knowing that she may never see that sight in the same way ever again.
And pretty much the only thing that's getting reported today: BP's stock is down a fraction of a point. Their assets should have been seized immediately after the pipe started spewing oil into the Gulf, as has become our practice with other terrorists. Instead, BP will, of course, declare bankruptcy, so they won't have to pay a nickel to the millions of people whose lives they have destroyed.
And they will never even apologize to the little girls and boys who will never have the experience that has been so important to families all across the south.