Beloved Little Ritual

Because once twenty years ago, on a perfectly clear and sunny day like this, we ate deviled eggs and smoked fish with our daughter and drank the finest white wine one could buy at the town’s gas station, the conversation and laughter running into the dark when we could see the lights of Lake Superior’s freighters passing by and hear the gentle lapping of the water on the beach, and we had to go inside to get sweaters and sweatshirts because we wanted our time outside, laughing, to not end because of dark and cold, because it was the best time we could ever have, a fact we knew while it was happening, well, because of that, we celebrate every year, this year the eggs coming from a roadside stand that said “Fresh Eggs $3.”