In her mind, the view to the ocean out the oriel window mingled with early childhood memories of a summer vacation in Wellfleet that her Father had given her Mother on the same Christmas morning that the viewfinder reel of Cape Cod appeared in her six-year-old girl's stocking, as if Santa Claus knew that summers of the coming years would be spent on Cape Cod.
Sand dunes first seen through a ViewMaster. Sand dunes stretching for miles and miles along the Atlantic Ocean. Walking down the hill to the Bayside beach early in the morning. Shell treasures on her bedroom shelf. The odor of the horseshoe crab shell that her mother exiled to a weathered table outside the house.
Library books checked out for the summer. Dog stories. Lassie Come-Home. Big Red. The Palomino horse in a corral beside a back road. Saltwater waves. Wet bathing suits on the clothesline.
The magical view of a lighthouse through the ViewMaster. The post card of Chatham Light that she mailed to her Grandmother. The keeper's house at Nauset Light. Her Father's stories of how the lighthouses guided sailors lost at sea. The box of watercolors that appeared on her bedside table.