Where I go

These past many weeks long, my friends have written from far-off, quiet places—cabins near the shore, cabanas high on the beach, the slip of land beside the lake, a grandfather's lodge.  They've been reading and writing, staked out on a chair, cracking clamshells at night, throwing a lobster to the grill.  These are writers and readers, taking time away to do what they most love to do.

We haven't had that sort of summer here (though I have yearned for such a day or two).  Now it's August's end, and a single week remains before our son disappears for another university semester.  We have to go somewhere, we said to one another, and so we did what we tend to do when we have less than 24 hours within which to travel—take the 90-minute drive to Atlantic City.  We don't gamble.  We don't swim.  But we walk the boardwalk at night, have dinner, talk.  We're together, and that is what matters.

We leave before nine in the morning.  I take a beach walk before we do.  This was Atlantic City, just after dawn, today.