While I sit and wait for our departure, a group gathering around some boats is slowly growing. There's family and friends, children running, some standing by and watching, their little fingers in their mouths, some of the men holding fishing rods, seagulls flying low. It's almost camp. Almost. The sun is slowly casting long shaddows in miniature sandpits; the air casts shaddows too, adding a settled calm to all, movements and sounds muffled. A thin line of stratospheric cool undercutting the warm afterglow of a whole day of sun on our skin.
When we will have returned to checking our watches (we still have to return to a schedule of filing official papers, vacuuming our home and tidying away the reminders of our daytrip, and then be in bed in time so that the priorities are clear), our isolation will be with us, in our bags, carried all the way back to our car. Are you already angry about the mass (yes, and mess, too) these bags will produce, the damp towels, the beach sand spilling throughout the house?
How wonderful, I think. For days I will have the sand beneath my feet. A little solace for having to abandon this view.
