I had truly forgotten the immensity of the ocean.

We had not been to the beach in a very very long time. Oh, there were reasons, even beyond our constant cries of “busy”-ness, but they all seems to dissolve into foolish caricatures today when we stood on the shore and watched the white-maned waves come crashing in.

There is a soft, unfocused haze that accompanies these ocean days, something that just registers on the visibility scale but is more like a vintage photo, a sort of summer softening that is, no doubt, a clouding of the atmosphere above the surf with microscopic moisture, but it makes your time there seem like an immediate memory.

So Lucian and I spent a good hour running along the beach and playing a sort of offensive/defensive line game where he would try to outmaneuver me so he might run headlong into the oncoming waves, and I would try to cut him off or, for those times he did slip past me with a head fake or other cleverness (like waiting for me to start texting a description of the stellar picture I wanted to send to Iryshka), catch him from behind with a valiant, stretching leap.

There was such a purity of pleasure, mingled with that specialized nostalgia not for things you actually experienced but for the belief you once had in the way such experiences would feel. I know that is confusing, so I will try to rework it: it felt like I was touching on the feelings I always thought I would feel when I came to California for my endless summer of warmth, love, and oceanic fun.

We have it so good here in California. It is a profound moment when you remember it, not idly but intensely. In a messy stream of days all choked with impatience and lost time, all blurred with fatigue and expectation, it is a gift to awaken (again) to the thought that everything might just be quite perfect.