I woke up to my younger sister, wide awake, and ready for a walk with me. We headed to the beach, talking hard and deep and the sun beat hot on our faces, as we walked southeast by the Gulf. So, lost in conversation, happily, I took no pictures. A rare opportunity to process so many mothering and sistering issues. Sweet alone time, the two of us. We finished the walk and I went for a swim to do a few laps. All day the gang of us walked to and from the beach, slathered in suntan lotion and we swam in the warm water and mild waves of the gulf, reminiscing, reading aloud a short story from the Best Short Stories anthology, 2018, edited by Roxanne Gay. For sunset, before dinner out, we drove to St. Armand’s Circle and parked and walked the short walk to Lido Beach, and there, squeezed on a bench in the sand, we stopped a passing stranger to take our picture. Then texted it to our kids: see. We are here together without you, all grown up. What ran through my thoughts all day: how we are together, and no fights, except mild argument over what movie we would watch tonight and finally agreed but I’m too tired after all, my eyes blinking toward sleep and my head groggy from the waves and the heat and the day of nonstop conversation, my thought was this, that twenty years ago there was such a rift in the family, such a wound and a splitting over a family business issue, it lasted for at least two years and the conflict felt Shakespearian and so dramatic and terrible I was afraid, in those dark days, it felt, of course, as if wounds being created might never possibly be healed. The rope, the tether, the mystery of healing. Hope. Here we are, holding on.