But we are together in this place for only a little while. Make yourself whole again. Life is still sweet, and love is still possible. Isle Madame has taught me about time and mortality and the brilliant interlude between birth and death. I have been here now for more than a quarter of a century, a watchful navigator in the flowing stream of time.
People mature and flourish and fade.
The Skipper and his generation are gone. Those who were middle-aged when I came are moving into the serenity of age. The active ones who run our affairs were teenagers when I first moved here. Their own children are becoming young lawyers and school bus drivers, woodworkers and programmers. I did not expect to spend a lifetime here.