Hatteras sun

There's something incredibly healing to me about beach sun.

After getting back from France and crashing for a few days, I headed down to North Carolina, to meet my best friends from college and their families. There were seven adults, and nine children (9!) -- the best behaved children ever, and next to my nieces, my favorite kids in all the world.


Some of them are getting to be all grown up and reminding me that my friends are actually going to be launching little humans into the world in a few years (okay, 8 or 9 years, which still sounds very close). They sometimes get picked on at school and are developing wonderful character and minds and I am afraid maybe they don't know just how great they are.

And some of them are still small enough that they want to just be in your lap. Sweet three-year-old Sarah was attached to me all weekend and I have to say, it's lovely to be adored by a three-year-old. (I think maybe that's my favorite age.) We were reading a book and I said, "Why don't we go downstairs and see what everyone else is doing?" and she said, "But, we're all alone." Like, why in the world would I want to be around all those other kids? So we snuggled (which, I think, is also healing).


We had lovely weather -- sun and fog and rain, but mostly sun. We sat in the hot tub for hours. We swam in the pool. We ate far too much -- doughnuts, Rice Krispie treats, ice cream, more ice cream. We hung out on the beach and watched the kids play. Mostly, we just were.