It’s August. Summer vacations are drawing to a close.

Did you ever see the ocean when you were little?

The closest I came was a postcard from Cape Cod. From my godmother. She and her family had rented a cottage not far from the beach.

I stared and stared at that postcard. It was the only postcard I ever received as a child.

I wanted to see and hear and breathe and immerse myself in that ocean. But Daddy didn’t go far from his chair near the fireplace where he chain-smoked into the dark each night.

Maybe that’s why, when given the opportunity, I fled to Cape Cod to live and teach at age 22.

It’s in our DNA. I wanted to feel it up close, to be enveloped in it, to be drowned/not drowned in it.