I am in love with this photograph, it moved me deeply, and for so many reasons.

My daughter Emma is a fine photographer, she has a natural gift for composition and emotion. She sent me this photo of Robin yesterday, and I will concede, my heart skipped a beat. Emma and Robin are vacationing on Cape Cod, staying with my first wife, Paula.

This photo struck many chords.

The Wellfleet beaches were an integral part of my life and our l lives together and of our family life. They are a place of great memory for me, so much so that it is too painful for me to visit or  return there. For more than 25 years, Paula and I took summer vacations at the beach, including every year of Emma’s life.

The place has so much meaning for me. That was the core of my idea of family for so much of my life.

I wrote a number of my books there. I felt so at home as a writer there. I pined to be there when I was  away.

Emma and Paula loved the beach,  I didn’t care for all that much sun and sitting still. But I loved being up there.

I  remember walking with Paula and talking of buying a house in Wellfleet, even of moving there when my books hit big and we had the money. I came  of age as a writer on those summer vacations. Every morning, we walked on the beautiful marshes with our dogs.

Our friends came up to visit us and rent their own houses and rooms. There were long and lazy days on the dunes as we watched our children grow up.

Emma loved this beach as a baby, and also when she grew older, and still. She and Paula loved their vacations there,  and still go together every year. We had the sweetest memories there, even as I began to deteriorate and became too anxious and  depressed to sit still.

For much of my life, I wanted to be anywhere but where I was, and it wasn’t until I realized that the problem was me, not the places I lived, did I begin to recover.

I remember their Scrabble games, their trips to the trendy produce market, their reading for hours on the beach. Paula and Emma are close, they were easy together in a way that was always difficult for me.

Year by year, I became estranged from this beautiful place, uncomfortable on the beach, struggling with the routines of vacation.  I started bringing a second car and drove to Provincetown, where I hung out with my poet friend Keith. I loved Provincetown, I felt more comfortable there than anywhere on the  earth. I walked around every inch of P’town, I think I know every building there.

Up there, I began to move a way from my family, break off and get on a different path. Up there, I began to see that my idea of family couldn’t survive.

I know now that I was beginning to break down. I didn’t see it then.

When Maria and I got married, we went up to the Cape for a visit, but nostalgia is a trap, it seemed crowded and overrun to me, more like a suburb than the creative community i remembered and fantasized about.  For me, the magic was gone. The artists and poets and writers are all gone also, they can’t afford to live in the place they created.

It is just another place for rich people to go and build big homes, working people can’t afford to be there.

The friends I had made who were still there seemed nervous around me, we didn’t seem to have anything to talk about any longer. I never saw the friends who came to visit us again. I think they were Paula’s friends. I think  that’s what happens in divorce.

I have let go of those dreams, but the memories  remain of course.

I think that kind of family connection will not be possible for me now, at least not in that way. I went in a very different direction, even after 35 years of marriage.  I take responsibility for that, and have no regrets. Maria and I often ask one another “what is wrong with us?”, that we cannot seem to do the things most people do.

I am not a part of that cycle any longer, there is no place for me in that picture. Robin’s experience is not my experience. We will have to build different memories of one another. I love my new life and am at home in it, and at peace, at long last. I am where I should be and they are where they should be.

I am glad Emma will get to share her love of the Cape with her daughter, I hope they will be as close as she is to her mother. I can see it happening now.

I am happy Robin will get to experience the joys of the beach, the sense of discovery and freedom there, the sounds of the gulls, the gloomy foghorns of the ships, the crashing of the water, the sand crabs and shells, the lobster dinners, the juicy clams.

Much of my life I have wondered what it means to be a father, and the closest i can get to an answer is this: what I always wanted for Emma is for her to be happy and secure in her own life, and not be bound to mine. That at least, has come to be. I wish the same for Robin.

It looks as if they are off to a good start up there in Wellfleet the next few weeks. Maria asked me if it made me sad, and I think yes, a little bit.

If you look out at the ocean and away from the McMansion’s, it’s still a beautiful place, I can see it. Emma also loved, as did I, the feel of sand on bare feet. This photo captures Robin’s joy, and also the story of family, good days and bad.