I walked barefoot to our mailbox on Sunday. Thankfully we live on a dirt road and there is no Sunday delivery. I walked free of anticipation, carefully considering each step. The walk felt weightless: Armstrong-like.

Where the dirt turns to asphalt, the shade of the trees edging the road invited me to continue. In my new summer feet – not yet padded – I stepped my way past the row of empty mailboxes toward the cove with its promise: ankle lapping waves of cool salt water.

The pavement burned hot. Between leafy shadows, my feet found the lined shadows of overhead wires strung between ivy climbed telephone poles. Tightroping one foot over the next, I mimicked the high wire act of squirrels.

Around the bend, I passed the old family home of a best friend from high school and thought of him – now – living in another town with a family of his own – his brushes and oiled paints turning blank canvases into art. 

At the bottom of the hill where you turn right at the landing, I remembered the cottage once there that my family had rented for two weeks in August. Empty days filled with croquette, mini golf, ice cream, ocean swims, lake rinses, and sticky screened-in nights with roasted marshmallows on found sticks.

As hoped for, the water was a cold relief. The smell of the tide conjured a memory of playing cowboy with blankets draped over the split rail fence of my grandparents’ house. I could almost smell the studio off the garage where my grandmother’s drawings revealed themselves on her slanted drafting table. Images outlined by sharpened pencils and filled with water colors.

I stood firm against the ankle lapping waves, the wind chasing sailboats around the cove. Behind me, parked alone on the landing sat a friend’s truck. I wondered where his boat might be returning from later. 

Empty handed, I stood filling my lungs with salt air accented by barbeque-smoking coals – a perfect summer afternoon. The clear sky promised a sunset with the last orange light extinguished by the illusory Western Coast horizon of the sandbar we call home – its crooked arm flexing into the Atlantic on a planet we no longer believe is flat. 

I turned away from it all to walk back home, barefoot and happy I had nothing left to do.