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Looking back (looking back at then), it was a time of great happiness, quiet awe. All things, as they chose to present themselves at that hour, were pleasant. It was a time of much love and idleness; a time in which money seemed abundant and we spent what time we had like money. We spent time with the unfurling of each day and each other—often as pageants of light, thought and time; often as days at the beach watching the waves break and the surfers upon them—the sand, the foam, drifting thought and thoughtlessness drifting (the thought of love)—this handsome landscape. We spent afternoons with children and dogs, young cousins, inarticulate tourists, found coins, driftwood and seashells, thoughtless winds. We headed home with reluctance and a tiredness and that sweetness of love. Also we spent days in the airy mountains, days adrift, heady, lakeside or from the boat dock and sometimes from the boat upon clearly empowered waters. From the cabin window we watched the night come to us aloft, accompanied by herbs and tea, eventually by moonlight or fire, toyon and smoke. We spent nights at the casino, nightcaps in the bar (the waitress recently blonde), tossing our mad money like stolen kisses and giggling at those moments remembered as moments of our scene. We spent nights with the photo album, nights of quiet tenderness, thinking back—and occasionally, the night spent thinking (drinking) alone.

We listened to Van Morrison sing "A Sense of Wonder" again and again and again (O Solo Mio). We listened to Mozart and Joseph Hill. Sometimes one of the children would sing and we would pause to listen. We listened to the wind chime from the chaise lounge on the patio and all things then seemed in consort with one another in a way we could only embrace and desire. We listened to each other, although never close enough or soon enough or with patience enough to hear clearly the song.

I turned my head from the pastoral landscape and looked in your eyes. And you, reflecting the oak limb and its possessions, looked into mine. What else was there to do? What more was there to consider? We loved the weather and its penchant for rain. This thought of love, of our love, hung about us like a ripening fruit, aromatic and burgeoning with fluids, often gainfully attired. You laid on your couch and I laid on mine. We had time to kick about and we kicked it about. You took hold of the remote and changed the channel as I looked out the window at our neighbor gathering his mail in the mist—a rough, old song accompanied the commercial, one that we liked.

What I remember most was the shine upon standing water, a breeze upon that, a memory in its shimmer. Even then (looking back at then), we knew to remember.