As so often happens while preparing to leave, there was confusion and disappointment about exactly who was going.
In truth, we almost never take vacations, mostly because we can't bear the thought of leaving the cats missing anything in the garden, such as our magnificent crossvine, which was taunting us with its unprecedented number of flowers.
It was slightly less heart-rending to leave the mushrooms that had suddenly popped up in the bamboo trough.
With the help of our annoyingly smug GPS robot, we made it east across the dreaded Cross-Bronx Expressway and onto the Throgs Neck Bridge, from which point the city looked like a tiny but impressive model of New York City. It was difficult to believe that people made this commute every day. (No doubt they would say the same thing about riding the C-train.)
In Riverhead, we stopped at a large crypt that had been stocked with edible supplies, most of which were for sale. As so often happens in the suburbs, I felt overwhelmed by the promise and the demise of the American dream. On a related note, we debated whether to buy suntan lotion, now that it has been found to cause cancer, and ultimately decided to get some. Old habits, etc.
Some time later, we made it to our "destination." (As per the GPS robot.) Before going to our lodgings, we stopped for a few minutes at the town beach, which in the spirit of democracy is accessible to everyone but in the spirit of fascism does not allow anyone to park within a five-mile radius of this access point without a sticker from the town. The United States is nothing if not a study in contradictions.
On this day, I felt both tendencies, given that we lacked a sticker but were nevertheless close enough to walk to the beach. I was also happy that nobody else was here.
And walking over the dunes, I felt all of my aggravations -- personal, political, practical -- vanish as I took in the ocean; or it would no doubt be more accurate to say that it took me in.
I felt smaller than a grain of sand, but that was more than enough.