Dear Wyatt,
Your father is driving me nuts lately, although he basically always drives me nuts, so perhaps if he were not insisting on hanging out with me on the deck as I write and drink wine and look for neighbors to chat with, and he’s here sort of weeding and grunting at the same time, maybe I’d be more tolerant.

Last night the parents of REDACTED came over and we had a fantastic time on the deck. It’s so hot but yet we are on the deck, playing soft 80s rock and telling stupid stories by the light of the citronella candle.

Today daddy and I went to Robert Moses Beach at the ass crack of dawn as to miss traffic. We did get in the cold cold waves and we did NOT see any sharks. As it were Robert Moses, there were a lot of bodies around and that is for me a big draw of the beach. All the bodies in all their shapes and everyone staring at the waves and at each other and not feeling tremendously judgy. Bodies is bodies and everyone should have one day at the beach and feel the joy a good day at the beach brings.

I saw these two young men whom at first I was convinced were horrible misogynist frat-dudes (split-second analysis) and then I realized they were gay and together and one of them was reading The Giving Tree, which is such an upsetting book, and why bring it to the beach, but how sweet! At least at the end of the Giving Tree you get to sit on that nice flat stump. But no shade. I hate that book.

Without you to egg him on, your dad was not going nuts in the water. He just had me, scared-of-waves me, who dives through the break and then imagines the wave from Interstellar is coming until I have to run back to shore in a thinly-veiled panic attack. The ocean is deadly. It can kill you with one swift kick. Don’t ever turn your back on her.

Maggie is quiet. Just cut her hair, removed from Reddit and NextDoor, posting on Twitter about how Jay didn’t share his love of music with their kids and how could he abuse them so? Daisy is uploading documents for various identification and car and just getting older things she has to do. We went to ramen today and the oysters were good and we had all cold food except fried rice, which I do think we did not need, especially those of us who are trying to watch their weight.

From daddy:

Hey Wyatt!
One of mom’s new friends from the neighborhood came over yesterday and she is a certified tree trimmer. She brought these two expandable sticks with branch clippers on the end and we trimmed our tree and also the one further down the block. The one mom almost kicked over during the hurricane. It was really interesting except now i’m stuck with two huge bundle of branches that we don’t know how to get rid of.

I hope you are having fun and swimming a lot. It’s 95 degrees here today.

Love you,
Dad