The chorus of birdsong starts up every morning around 5 AM. It’s loud enough to wake me up until I close the window and, yawning, fall back to sleep. The backyard is becoming more lush with every passing day—purple day lilies bloom beside the raised beds and a climbing bush with flowers the delicate blush pink of the inside of a seashell has taken over the back corner of the fence. The smell of fresh mint (which grows rampant among the flower beds) and just-cut grass hangs in the air. Bright green hydrangea bushes are poised for their moment, the buds tightly curled still like tiny closed fists. But I know what splendor lies within—violent bursts of color that erupt suddenly in late June like fireworks.

I biked to the beach this morning, getting there early enough to be the only one in sight. The day was still brand new, existing in that tenuous and delicate state of creating itself anew, before it has declared what it will be: sunny and hot or warm and breezy or cloudy and persistently gray. This beach—my beach—is rocky and wide, stretching for miles in both directions before twisting and turning to hide itself behind the far-off sandy cliffs of Orient Point.