The surf is too heavy and rip currents too insistent for me to feel comfortable letting the kids play in the soupy high tide. Instead they're building sandcastles and chasing windblown seafoam down the beach. Shannon and I are munching tacos in the shade of a palm frond-thatched cabana. I assumed that for each taco ordered off the menu they would bring you one taco, but I was wrong. I ordered six tacos. They brought me eighteen tacos. So we clearly have some work to do.
I love the color of the air at the beach at 4:30 in the afternoon. It's guilded with gold, heavy with salty seaspray. Shannon wonders aloud if the kids are due for another layer of sunscreen. A puff of a zephyr pushes by and the crashing breakers roar and she takes another bite of her taco. I make up a statistic about how kids are less susceptible to sunburns that adults. Shannon says she doubts that, but she makes no move to get up. She dips her taco in the smidge of guacamole on her plate. The world is perfect right now, so why move and mess it up? Twelve more tacos to go.