Bethany Beach, Delaware, July 18, 2016

★★★★ Tiny fish, little black dashes, swam inside the top of a wave. The sun from the east was fierce but not prohibitive; the breaking waves on the outgoing tide had some exciting but not overwhelming ones among them. The four-year-old had been striking surfing or fighting poses as the water rushed over his feet, running away from the bigger surges and immediately circling back again. Now he consented to be carried out past the churning sand and into the clean swells. He bobbed or was bobbed there for a while, half-treading water while holding on, then asked to go back ashore, then immediately asked to go back out. His older brother, more cautious but still sand-spattered, finally agreed to try the deeper shallows too. The sands on the walk back up the beach were genuinely, painfully scorching underfoot. The younger boy dozed away the afternoon, sapped or ailing from his exertions, till he felt refreshed enough to walk down the boardwalk to the toy store, under the pink and blue tinge of oncoming evening. A parafoil kite strained against its ropes over the beach. The clouds inland were slate blue, and before long they were blackening and churning. In minutes the darkness had reached the ocean, hanging low over the water, with one glowing gap remaining. There was lightning and what sounded like thunder but was the first rain hitting the windows. All the eerie topography and shading in the sky collapsed into featureless gray. The greenery and blossoms outside bent and tossed; sheets of rain flapped by. Even as the storm still subsided, glimpses of gorgeous color were caught in west-facing windows for a while before the real night came on.