Time is doubling back on itself oddly in this place that echoes deeply for me, in this moment that echoes deeply for our country. Every summer of my childhood, the top floor of the middle cottage was ours for 2 glorious weeks. It was time out of the world, with no phone or TV or newspapers. Except one year, which must have been 1989, when I was seventeen. That year, my family decided to break the rules.

We went into the Orleans village center and bought the Sunday Boston Globe on the middle weekend of the vacation. Why? Because the entire family was so worried about what that new Justice Anthony Kennedy would do in his first abortion rights case on the Supreme Court bench.

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services was decided on 7/3/89, with Kennedy joining the majority opinion. For the first time, SCOTUS upheld a state’s right to restrict the use of state funds and resources not just to perform but also to counsel on abortion.

Now I’m back here, in this cottage where my heart is gripped with love for the avocado-green plastic dishes still in the cupboard, the old Readers Digest volumes on the bookshelves, the particular smell that inhabits the squeaky old dresser drawers. I’m bewildered with gratitude that my niece and nephew are learning to love this tiny home and this beach as I do.

So maybe I understand the lure of the the old days. #MAGA? I’m as capable of idealizing the past as anyone. But I just want to remember the good, not the bad. I want s’mores at sunset again, not the part where I was afraid my right to decide what’s best for my body and my life might be taken away.

I was and am incredibly lucky to vacation here. (Indeed, to vacation at all.) I was and am incredibly lucky to look back on the past as a happy time. Not everyone is so lucky.

The past was great as long as you weren’t one of the people who were getting told you couldn’t vote because of your skin or gender, or express your love for your same-sex partner. Or getting beaten or killed for trying to do those things. Or as long as you weren’t dying from lack of access to health care. Or or or or… the list goes on and on.

Now here I am again. And here we are again. I’m happy to be back, and I’m crushed to be back. And once again, I realize: if we don’t fully remember the past, we can’t really hope to do better.

Personally, that’s what I’m trying for right now. I don’t have the answers to what we should do as a country. I just wish I knew — really KNEW — what we’ve already tried. And where that failed.

I don’t want the dream of the past. Not even here, where my family used to hide from the world. As the past becomes present again in too many ways, I want to live up to my personal Rule #3: See clearly through kind eyes, speak clearly with true voice.