Chris and I began coming to the small wooden house on Beachview Drive ten summers ago. I have since gained a decade and ten pounds, enjoyed a front-row seat in my hair’s changing from red to grey, lost a particularly nasty part of my colon, said goodbye to the ease and generosity of Buddy, and said hello to the charming neuroticism of Emmet. I have discovered painting, learned how to knit, and started making my own clothes. I have helped my children pack to leave the house, shutting our yellow front door behind them with a mixture of profound sadness and some relief.

It has been an eventful decade, almost to the point that my 44 year-old self feels like a stranger. But it was that person who insisted on that first trip to Beachview, just Chris and me, to talk about the unhappiness and sadness that had wormed its way into our marriage and nearly strangled it. The first summer held tears and painful silences and conversations about what a life going forward needed to look like. A house that is barely 500 square feet is a perfect place for difficult talks. You cannot ignore one another. You have to share a bathroom, space, air. You feel like you are in a foxhole, the two of you against the world. That trip ended with the Beachview Peace Accord that continues to inform my view of us.

Every year has gotten better, and this week has become my favorite week of the entire year. There are rules (if you can call them that). Sleep when you want to, even if you last slept only a few hours before. Walk on the beach at least three times a day. Ride bikes whenever possible. Buy Italian ice from the umbrella cart selling it on the beach. Check work email sporadically or not at all, which is what I started doing, or not doing, four years ago. Read. Make art. Indulge in small pleasures. (I bought four magazines, wasabi peas, and bottled Coca-Colas at Publix on our way in yesterday, and it felt positively lawless.) Pack light.

This year’s week came suddenly. It has been a difficult year, and recent weeks have found me working like a dog. The attendant lack of sleep had left me with temporary cognitive lapses, struggling to remember words, forgetting even recent conversations, having difficulty pinpointing exactly where I was in space and time. I finally remembered this week a few weeks ago, only to find myself texting the house’s owner about whether we were to arrive Saturday or Sunday.

(Saturday.)

Chris and I packed yesterday, having ten years of knowing the space we could fill and exactly what we needed. It took us no time to unpack, and an even shorter time before we were walking on the beach. He held my hand, bear-paw style, and the two of us, attired in a way that would make our dermatologist happy, set out. We have to enjoy this time.

This is the last year for Beachview. The current owners live next door. A few years ago they bought the house and saved it from being razed to build a massive condominium. A few months ago they decided to move this house into town, build themselves a new house on this lot, and turn their current, much larger, and older cottage into a rental. As much as I would like to blame them or be angry about their decision, I cannot. I live in a 96 year-old home, meaning that I spend my fair share of time fantasizing about what it would feel like to be cool in the summer and warm in the winter. There’s a lot to be said for charm. There’s even more to be said for comfort, especially as one grows old.

There are no other little houses on the beach, and the expense of renting the larger cottage may be a powerful deterrent. I am not sure that we will be back or what the future holds. Whatever our decision, nothing will be the same.

But everything ends. Take the unhappiness and the discomfort of my decade-ago self. Something felt really wrong then, and something had to change. It was, and it did. Ten years later in a little wooden shack that sits on the Atlantic Ocean, I will finish writing and join Chris and eat half of the watermelon he has before him in a bowl. We will walk again, hands held like bear paws, and I will wonder if there will ever be enough time to do all of the kind things that I want to do for him.

We took this photo last night, two people with the unbelievable good fortune of growing up and growing older together, visiting for the last time a dear, dear place. I am no longer the piece of glowing ripe fruit that I was in that picture in the last story, but I feel more beautiful and loved than that girl could ever imagine.

ALC