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Go Into the Light
For me it begins with the sea. Our annual August pilgrimage to Cape Cod is what we -- my wife, Hilary, and I with our three-year-old son, Tynan -- look forward to and look back on all year.We arrive, pale and blinking, from our tiny New York apartment with its lone window and 15-minute patch of sunlight on some days, in some months. We've rented the same house in Chatham every year since Ty was born. It's our chance to "go into the light."
After the steep drop down from the cliff to the beach, we see rolling dunes dotted with beach grass, scrub pine, primroses. Breakers stretch north and south, the wave line churning with shells, crabs, birds, seaweed, fish. Seals float on their backs out past the surf line, playing. On the gentle bay beaches, Tynan and I play airplanes, running along the surf's edge, arms out, crashing into and through the wavelets. I have to be careful that he doesn't get too far away from me, since even these bayside waves can capsize him. I take him into the water and we float, and he laughs and laughs.
Our friends Peter and Katy are here, too, down the road. Sometimes we picnic with them on the beach, sitting in our chairs looking out toward Spain, reading the paper, having the kind of elliptical conversations one can have with an open horizon. We listen to summer music mixes: Sly Stone, War, Madonna, Mungo Jerry. There is bodysurfing and oysters and baseball and martinis, kites, lobster, Frisbees, lighthouses, kids playing. These are the best days of the year.
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