H
ere is a Mary Oliver story for you.

One summer many years ago, when I was starting my first year in college and trying to figure out who I would become, my mom and I stayed in Cape Cod for cheap at the home of a friend of hers from medical school.

Our first morning there, my mother woke up at dawn for a walk on the beach and asked me if I wanted to come. I groggily, grumpily, told her no, preferring to sleep in. I was at the age when one gets angry at being pulled along to family vacations, when there are more important things to do than take a morning walk with your mom. I had brought some paperbacks that I wanted to get through and had stayed up late the night before reading them, in part to not deal with possible conversations or forced chatter with my mom’s medical school friends.

An hour later, just as I was waking up from slumber, my mother came in, all smiles and sun happy.

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