Jason and I took the dogs down to the beach at the bottom of the hill too. I lived on this beach in the summer. My mother set three rules. The first rule restricted swimming for 20 minutes after eating (this rules was s big pain because, as we were watchless, we needed to ask someone on the beach what time it was when we ate and then we needed to keep asking folks what time it was until 20 minutes was up). The second was that you could go swimming once the air temperature hit 70 degrees. The water rarely exceeded 65 and was more likely to be colder than that. So, the other rule was that we had to come out of the water to warm up for a bit when the tips of our fingers and/or our lips began to turn blue. By age 7 or 8 my brothers and I visited the beach on our own. We were adept swimmers - I began swimming so early that I don't even remember learning how.

sandy beach, facing whitehead passage and the open Atlantic.

It is important to me that my children get to know the island. I don't expect them to be islanders too, but I want them to have memories of the tides and this beach, to nurse barnacle cuts, to find jellyfish on the shore and learn, over time, that it is just as much fun to return them to the water as it is to skewer them with driftwood. I want my kids to appreciate 20 minutes of quiet or visiting with neighbors on the ferry. I want them to know island kids by name and feel, even after not seeing them for 15 years, that they are more than just acquaintances.

Anyway, I've returned to the Midwest.