Again yesterday, July 14th (which would have been my mother’s birthday), my daughter, grandkids, and I enjoyed a perfect beach day. I really love being this close to the sea! The ocean had warmed up even more! As I watched my granddaughter ride her board in on wave after wave, fearless as a mermaid, I soaked in the sun and sea and revisited memories of long ago days. As a child, I repeatedly vacationed in a family beach cottage at Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island–a weathered cottage that my mother, her siblings, and her cousins, had also visited all the summers of their childhoods. That cottage was sold out of the family upon my great-aunt’s death, later remodeled, and later still, torn down to be replaced by a huge modern beach house. A couple of years ago, I wrote a brief personal tribute, Time and Tide, to those days; it appears in the archives of the on-line journal, Sea Stories. Enjoy!