A day framed by the sun, rising and setting on the Gulf of Mexico:

I was out early, just as the sun was coming up behind the tree on the beach. I walked and found a frayed and water worn and weedy rope washed ashore on the sand. I found a fascinating mushroom capped jellyfish like a gruesome breakfast splayed on a plate. It was day of more arrivals of my siblings. I drove to the airport and picked up one sister, one brother, arrived on the same plane. Eagerly took them to the beach for the afternoon where I took a long second walk with my brother and we all swam happy as children in the mild, warm waves. We stayed until the sun went down over the horizon. And then, after dinner, our brother, the oldest, arrives with his wife. And now, the five of us are here together, laughing and catching up. So far, the only mishaps have involved one sister and one brother painfully stubbing their toes on entirely separate occasions. I feel so grateful for this gathering. That every one of us went to the trouble and expense to fly here from various coasts, and even for just a short weekend. We’ve chosen this special occasion, to be together, just for the fun of it. I want my own three children to want this with each other after I am gone some day. I can hear them, still, downstairs, laughing and talking as I write this, as I prepare to sleep and dream, perhaps, mysterious dreams from the deep well of memory. We are tied to each other like the rope, I think. Like the rope my father tied around around our waists as children when we climbed the granite peak together up Mount Monadnock and he thought this rope would keep us, somehow, from losing one of us off the granite ledge, except now as a grown up I see, we all see, the frayed logic: tied together, if one of us fell, well, of course, we all would.