I chose the F. That time I could have played the N or F?

“It is up to you,” the counselor says. “And why is getting better up to you?”

“Because,” I say, my answer practiced, “I am the one who cares the most.” Even when I am not.

Remember last week’s storm that blew up from the tropics? Karen and I walked the beach the morning after, what beach there was left to walk. We saw four people haul in a large piece of something that, out of the surf, you could see was the hull of a good-sized sailboat. A hundred yards ahead, another piece of wood was being examined by an elderly man. He showed us the splintered stern with part of the boat’s name still stenciled on it in blue:—Wood.

Karen and I continued down the beach, guessing at the name of the ruined boat: Driftwood? Hollywood? Firewood now, more’s the pity. Until the missing piece washed up at our feet, and all we had to do to complete the puzzle was bend down and turn it over, and—

Touch. “Touch Wood.”

So it was to the objects in the world around her that the letter writer turned.

Please excuse the switch to notebook paper; I just ran out of the good stuff. And if my penmanship suffers, it is because I am not at a desk, but in a parked car, and using my knee for support.

The driver this time is polite. He has not tried to hurry me along as other of the drivers have. He brought along a book of the stripe I could hold up to the unidentified object that flies. He brought a Thermos. And has not asked me what time it is, but has only excused himself to use the facilities across the street.

It is rabbit hour, the time they come out into the open. I wish it never got any darker than this, the moment you can no longer tell that grass is green.

If you say that you think you need to stay on, the management here says, “Of course.” If you tell them you feel you are ready to move on, these same people say, “That’s right.” I didn’t tell anyone I was trying to leave—circle of well-wishers reaching to say good-bye, reaching so that arms tangle and heads knock, yourself caught in the cross-love.

I said I had to go to town to mail a letter, to get it weighed and buy the right stamps, being careful not to drop it on the ground before it is posted. That would bring bad luck. For us both.

I asked the driver, as soon as he returned, to cut around to back behind the residential homes; there’s a corridor through the dunes where you can see the ocean waves and the saltwater pond, a sanctuary for birds. Terns are quarreling in a windswept, vine-hung pine. And—worthy of your brush—three egrets stop in different poses for a second, as if they were a single bird at three consecutive moments. Now they are in motion, alighting on the sand. The tide this time of year washes hundreds of tiny starfish up onto the beach. It leaves them stranded in salty constellations, a sandy galaxy within reach.