Just got back from two days at The Beach. (Have you ever noticed how people refer to The Beach as if it's one particular place?) We did the play-in-the-waves thing, the picnic thing, the aquarium thing, the going-for-seafood thing, and C was just superb. She loved the "wa-wa" and was a lot more fearless than I had expected--she normally works from her parents' more measured style--cautious, observational, intent. I joked that it was her Aquarian spirit coming to the fore.

The world seems to be roughly divided into Lake People and Beach People. (Perhaps there are Mountain People too.) I've deliberated upon this often, while sitting on a dock beside a tranquil lake, or while listening to the waves pound relentlessly at the sand. I have realized that I am a beach person. I am a beach person in spite of hating the way that sand gets everywhere, into every tote bag and picnic basket, no matter how careful I am. Maybe I'm a beach person because of this, because it's good for me to let little grains of messiness spill into all the baggage that I carry around and try to keep pristinely clean. Beaches also pound away at the rough edges of one's life. People leave the beach flushed and spent and otherwise smoothed out.

C is 18 months old this week. I wrote here recently that it's been 18 months since Dad's death. This is the way it will always be. Dad's death anniversary will come along, and C's birthday will come tumbling along soon afterward, a jumble of joy and sorrow that is so typical of Life.

There is something strange about seeing one's child standing waist-deep in a body of water that is connected to a larger body of water that is connected to every other body of water. Like one false step and she could be carried away by it, that the immensity of that water could consume her. Not really of course, because you're right there, but there is some sort of mismatch between how small she is and how large your love is for her--larger even than the body of water she wades into. I saw her standing with my mother several weeks ago, in the middle of a field of sunbathers and picnickers, an ocean of people totally indifferent to her presence. And I thought, how could they possibly go about their business? There is nothing in heaven or on earth finer than she is.