Christmas Day, 2021

Christmas greetings from a chilly and rainy Cape Cod.

We walked for a few miles along the beach to begin the day, and while there were no other humans, we saw plenty of seagulls, cormorants, plovers, and Canada geese. Flying up into the gray sky before swooping back down to the even grayer water, the gulls let out a mournful cry that hollowed me out. Meanwhile, the plovers, choreographed by the easy ebb and flow of the outgoing tide, made me laugh with their vaudevillian strutting. Oh, those tiniest of legs marching manically to a tune I’ll never know! When they begin the routine, how quizzically Sam and Emi study them.

There were signs reminding people to be kind to seals, but look and hope as I did, we did not encounter one. Goodness knows how I would have enjoyed their company.