Yesterday I went for a walk and caught the bay at one of the lowest tides I've ever seen it. I watched as the sky turned from this into the most fiery, intense fuchsia I've ever seen in any Long Island sunset.
It was quiet and still until a city couple with their young boy drove up to the spot nearby where I took this photo, got out of the car, and started yelling at each other while angrily and hastily trying to take family photos. The boy was wearing rain boots and at one point ran into the water (IT IS COLD) saying "Mom, look! I'm in the water!"
I looked at him and thought "STUPID KID YOU ARE IN THE WATER AND YOU ARE DISTURBING MY ZEN CLEAR-THINKING TIME."
But then, looking at him directly, I suddenly was transported into a different time, still on the bay but now it was summer. The brilliant fuchsia sunset was bright as ever, and there was still a child in the water, but this time it was my child (who looked exactly like my current boyfriend) and he was clamming, digging with his little toes into the sand in the hopes of finding something. I then clearly imagined his father on a sailboat--the same sailboat boyfriend recently bought in the hopes of fixing up this winter--and I realized that this was my childhood with my grandparents, except better. Better because I was giving it to my own child with a man that I do hold a certain deep and undeniable affection for, who is kind and generous and LISTENS to me (even though I say so much, 98% of which is ingenuine garbage), and who will undoubtedly be an amazing father.

And this filled me with delight and love and happiness but it also skeeved me out and depressed me just as much, as the idea of living the rest of my life on Long Island with my original home-town boyfriend makes me die a whole lot on the inside, regardless of how lovely I know it has the potential to be.

Not proofread.

-Camille