It was not temporary. It was not shared. It was theirs.
Both of my parents had worked in ways that the word work doesn’t quite capture — my father in construction management, the kind of work that takes a physical toll over decades, and my mother stretching a household budget with a precision that amounted to its own kind of labor. They had never owned something just for themselves. They had never had a place that was purely about rest and the ocean and the particular peace that comes when you stop performing for the world and just exist.
