Echo Lake Beach

It is one moment – one second, really – from 2022. To be precise, it was 2:38:47 in the afternoon on October 15, according to the notation on the digital photo.

Donna and I were standing on Echo Lake Beach, on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. It was two days before our 30th anniversary. We had been driving around the island and decided to stop at the beach, even though it wasn’t swimming weather that day.

There were a just a few other people, some of them with their playful dogs, on the beach that afternoon. We felt the slightest twinge of melancholy. The last time we stood on that beach, we were with our two sons, Jimmy and Chris, who were seven and three years old. We saw a seagull lift an entire pizza from some unfortunate picnickers that day in 2005.

Jimmy and Chris weren’t with us that Saturday afternoon last October. It was a moment just for us, but still we thought of them.

Mostly though, we felt happy to be together at Echo Lake Beach that Saturday afternoon last October.

Life has sped along efficiently – or not-so-efficiently – since last October. Life has moved along and we’re trying to figure out what to do next.

But I am glad I rediscovered this photo tonight. I needed it.

~217~