The audio served as a first draft for this more concise version:
Good morning. Today is Tuesday, June 25th.
Everyone's asleep in the house. Duce is visiting, and Darlene and Sophie are still in bed. So, I'm quietly leaving the cottage around 6 in the morning. The sun is up over Prout’s Neck. It made a nice ascent from behind a cloud bank and then popped out in all its glory, too bright to look at.
I'm barefoot, feeling the wet grass. There’s always family coming and going here, which makes me reflect on what this place means to us. It was my parents' vision to expand the original family cottage that my great-grandfather bought in the '30s as a gift to his wife. Over the years, my parents added more cottages.
Sometimes I think it's simply good fortune that our family has a place to gather each summer. But what does it mean? What is it for? Is it just a convenient vacation spot, or something more? Yesterday, I had a good conversation with my sister Steph about this.
We interact differently here, in real life in a specific place, than we do on FaceTime or Zoom. Without it, we might get together in person only at weddings and funerals. Darlene’s family used to have family reunions in South Dakota without a family compound. Her Dad was one of about 12 kids, so there were lots of cousins. I remember one time we met at a park in Belle Fourche for a barbecue with tasty food and lots of wonderful Determans I’d never met.
Gathering here in Ocean Park brings my family together, warts and all. There are disagreements—like when someone wants to change something in one of the cottages. I usually resist at first but give in later. Maybe next summer, I told Darlene yesterday when she wanted to paint a wall in the dining room of the cottage where we stay.
Ocean Park helps us smooth each other's edges through sunny moments of play and conversation, disagreements and misunderstandings, walks on the beach—the whole human catastrophe.
Steph and I see our role as taking care of these cottages, carrying them intact across a river of time. If we do that, future generations will be able to gather here to rub each other the wrong way, heal each other, teach each other, and love each other like there’s no tomorrow.
It’s a beautiful morning.
Thanks for listening.
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Nice way to catch the Morning Journal in a multimedia format. I like it (FWIW!