This is my mother, you met her some months ago -- July 4th, to be exact -- a day she considers the last day of summer. She's sitting, I think, on a beach in the Parker River Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island (Newburyport, Mass.) looking at... well, I don't know what she's looking at. Probably nothing.
If I were there, I'd be doing the same thing. Staring at nothing but the water rolling in and rolling back out. Over and over and over again.
Fire is the same way. Light a fire at campsite and you'll sit and look at it burning, doing nothing.
Why? It's hypnosis? Why? Where does it take us when it whisks us from the land of S'mores and boogeyboards?
My mother's favorite time of the day at the beach is around 4 or 5, when people leave it. She's sitting at a beach in October. She thinks summer ends on July 4th.
Wherever we go when we consider fire and water, there's no calendar or clock there.
"This is the closest thing to heaven that I can think of," says Grandma as we arrive at the beach. What's better than that?
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