It’s easy for people to go about their day-to-day lives walking down roads that are named for various people and passing by historical markers without paying any attention to them. Somehow, I became someone who read and paid attention to them not only for the history of the place, but for my personal history in that place, and my ongoing project of memory and memorialization, amnesia, and forgetting.

~ Natasha Trethewey, from an article in Vanity Fair

Waking up early, so naturally, these summer mornings, eager to be outdoors. Charlie and I walk through the woods to Farm Pond, and a swim with my friend while he fishes. We swim and talk, there is so much to say in the sunlight streaming around us. Then, a quiet rhythmic, hearty swim around the island, and back to shore, and Charlie, done fishing, waiting on the dock. The holiday weekend begins, in the afternoon; Frank wants to get some furniture for my daughter’s room, and so we go out to get a couch, find one easily in an uncrowded store, manage to get it into the house, up the stairs. His energy and strength in helping his family members have what they need to be comfortable is so wonderful. We have a cheerful day; the youngest and her boyfriend return, and we are celebrating three birthdays in the family at night: my son and his girlfriend arrive and, out together on the deck, we distance properly from each other and draw close in conversation, our birthday ritual of sharing what we most appreciate about the person whose special day it is. This is my son’s girlfriend’s first experience of the ritual, and we go around and under the starless sky in the cool, damp air, we say what’s in our hearts, spontaneously. And there is ice cream. And all of the evening is most delicious; being together. And there is a another new birthday coming soon, we feel his presence. and one day we’ll be sitting in this family circle, and his voice will be heard among us.