Bethany Beach, Delaware, July 25, 2013

★★ Rain smacked the windows, announcing the morning. The t-shirt that had been hung up, damp and salt-crusted, to dry on a patio chair now sagged flattened and wet there. It was cold enough that the window in the shower with the ocean view steamed over for the first time all week. The rain prickled the surface of a roadside puddle, then stopped, then resumed prickling it. Long pants came out for those who had even brought them; a hideous and strangely inflexible sage-colored sweatshirt was purchased in desperation. A boring debate with the older child about whether the drizzle counted as rain ended inconclusively. The high tide was spilling over onto the flat back of the beach again, and dirty yellow clots of foam were blowing sideways there, accumulating in great migrating clumps and stalled-out curves. The lifeguards wore jackets. Little shorebirds ran around in a flock in the wet spots. The gulls flapped against the wind, holding themselves motionless; one gull peeled off and rode the wind instead, at double speed. Torpor settled in. The crape myrtle out the window, in bloom, tossed in the breeze. Imaginary waterfront property changed hands and passed in and out of mortgage, late into the night.