Maybe it always happens this way. All of a sudden, windows and doors are opened wide and breezes are blowing the curtains and flooding the house with lilac scented air. You’re ever so comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt. Dinner is cooked on the grill and eaten outside on the deck. Everything seems lighter and freer somehow.

A weekend of firsts. First Saturday night of the season at the Chart Room. First shakedown cruise on the boat. First glimpse of the lighthouse at the mouth of Redbrook Harbor. First visit to the local ice cream stand. Reminders of the value of living in a seasonal community by the sea. Life gets to be new again and again.

e.e. cummings poem, maggie and milly and molly and may, says it best:

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and

millie befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.