Oh to be there.
Sun rising over the Pacific and a big cup of coffee. Pancakes later once everyone gets up but peace for now and an ocean to watch. The best part, the water looking the same no matter where you went as long as you keep staring straight ahead and don’t look at what’s on either side along the beach. Bath and boat houses everywhere but all looking different from the land. But all right the other way, too. Looking like a black mouth with ropes hanging down waiting to swallow anything you can sail or paddle up.
Quiet now but not for long. The baby beginning to stir in her crib and the other three up after. Orange juice to pour and blueberries to pick through.
But the wind turning into a breeze and a bright day the radio said.
If only. Great grandfather’s summer house in the Hebrides supposed to have been much nicer. Must have been bigger with far more than four bedrooms to have had those Edwardian house parties. Ten bedrooms, at least, those needed and a nursery that took up all of the third floor instead of half. Guests that stayed for a month instead of a fortnight and enough time to read anything that turned up in the bookcase in the guest room in the very back instead of looking for something short. No, enough time to almost read all of “War and Peace”, a fog horn that almost never stopped and a bigger lighthouse sweeping light across the bedroom wall over the bed as it swept around in its circle going twenty miles out to sea.
But the living room just as nice and so many things brought over you can time travel through the old stories. Great grandmother sitting in the rocker by the fireplace reading to the little ones like Mother talked about and Great grandfather complaining about the man taking too long to bring in the lamps when it grew dark.
But the children having fun and that part the same. Nothing better than even part of a summer with a different cousin for every day and mood . . . grown up and then they moved and it was a letter writing thing but not then . . . stones to skip and races to win . . .and that till the end of time and into another. . .
