Emma sent me this beautiful photograph of Robin on the beach in Wellfleet, Mass, where I used to go with my family for nearly 20 years every summer. It was a significant part of my other life, as remote and distant as it seems now.

When I see this photo, it stings a bit, I will admit. I miss that beautiful beach; it was a part of my life as a writer. I always wanted to live there, move there, be there.

Robin and Paula, my first wife and Robin, go there every summer, on the same road where we used to rent our own house.

Wellfleet was a place of yearning for me; it signified the literary life that I always wanted and never had and will never have.

I am fortunate in that I love my life now very much, but the picture flooded my soul with memories of a family I was to drift, even run, away from, and the pain of that will never entirely leave me.

If anyone had told me I’d end up on a farm in upstate New York and get divorced, I simply could not have conceived of it.

I spent many summers in Wellfleet; I never liked to sit and stew in the sun all day, I always ended up in Provincetown, drawn by the lives of all the artists and writers and poets who lived there, some of whom became my friends.

Theirs was the life I dreamed about and wanted. It was easy to rent a house or cabin there then; it would not be possible now. Even then, I was unhappy living in the New Jersey suburbs; I felt alien there, I didn’t belong.

Paula and I walked the marshes every morning on vacation, sometimes fantasizing about being there, working there. She loved Cape Cod, but it was my dream to be there for good, not hers.

She always supported my writing dreams, but they were not her dreams. She loved New York and never really wanted to leave there. It was in Wellfleet that I walked with Emma, took her on hikes, walked the dunes, saw her begin to grow up.

Every summer, I went on those dreadful whale watches (I know, they are supposed to be great, I hate them) Emma and I would walk the beautiful dunes, and leave a trinket, a poem, a rock for the Gods. I guess they are still there where we left them.

The dune walks were so beautiful; the Provincetown dunes are among the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. They were a part of me; I ached to rent one of the artist cottages so I could write a book there.

As time went on, I drifted from our routines. I rarely went to the beach; I was always hanging around Provincetown with my poet and writer friends. At night Paula and Emma loved to play scrabble.

I walked on the marsh and read. In the mornings, I got up early to write, I always had a book to write, and Wellfleet was a beautiful place to do that.

Emma and I sat on that very beach that Robin is standing on; those walks were our thing.

Summer by summer, I felt myself drifting away from them, wanting different things, aching for something I didn’t have, getting restless, losing my bearings.

Now it’s Emma and Paula and Robin in Wellfleet every summer, and at first,  it bothered me.

Now, I’ve grown past that,  I am just happy they still have that in their lives and that Robin and Emma still have that in their lives.

The Cape Cod I knew is gone, overrun, and gentrified. No young writer would dream of living there now or could afford it. But it lives for Robin and Emma, and that is a gift.

It was there that I felt myself drawing away, needing more, feeling lonely.

Divorce is hard; it’s awful when families get torn apart. But I ended up where I  want to be and need to be, and that is perhaps the biggest miracle of all.

So much has happened since then, I can’t bear to go to Wellfleet any more, too many memories. I took Maria there once, but it had changed for me. It felt forced and uncomfortable for both of us. We won’t do that again.

The writers and artists and poets are mostly all gone now, drive off by high rents and condo. I never heard from any of them, and I have lost track of them and that life.

I have not seen Robin in six or seven months, the pandemic is keeping us apart and may keep us apart for much longer if what I read is true.

But the picture has such great meaning for me; I have one photo Paula took of Emma in my desk drawer, smiling in much the same way Robin and standing on the same beach.

I love seeing Robin so happy. I know Emma is happy too, much happier without me than with me. That makes me happy too.

Life is a wheel; it keeps turning and turning. Robin loves the beach, just as Emma does.

Life is not about looking back for me, but looking forward. The photo reached my heart and brought me back to another time, another life.

I will never see Robin on that beach, and I will never see Emma there either.

The future is the future; it is mine to live.