So much joy here on Beach of My Heart. The fancy camera is giving me a whole new way to love this place… and to remember the beauty forever, because every year we know this is precious time that may never come again. Fear and loss are here too, always, the flipside of all the love. This year, it’s just sharper than usual.

Last week, I had to leave the family here for a few days – my mother and stepfather, sister and brother-in-law and nephews – to go be with another loved one in their time of loss. I came back to savor what I can of our time together, before I have to leave again for the funeral. The kids are on the cusp of college; the parents are more frail than any of us like to admit; I’m not invincible either. So we play mini-golf, and we get lobster under our fingernails, and we say I-love-you. And we hope for next year, but we never count on it.

More and more each year, the shadow of the outside world falls on our sunny days here, too. Coming back over the sand on my coffeewalk the other morning, I caught a snippet of conversation between two middle-aged white women walking a dog on this no-dogs-allowed beach.

“We were thinking about taking the company private, because we figured the stock would tank when news got out about the ICE flights. But then it went up! It’s like prisons. Everyone knows it’s a good investment now.” Her tone matter-of-fact, maybe a touch disapproving but with a shrug in it at the same time. As if to say: oh well, what can she do but extract profit from unconstitutional cruelty, it’s her job after all, and how’s your summer been going?

How indeed. It’s beautiful, and privileged, and complicated, and full of love for cherished things that do not last forever.

All the more reason to love them while we can.

Onwards.