We arrived at the house on Block Island on Thursday. The weather is sunny and so clear that America looks to be a mile or two away–not twelve. The wind is calm. Daffodils are out all over the island. There’s not a lot of activity in town, and where we live up at the end of Corn Neck Road, there’s hardly any. We’re the only ones here. Us, and all this ocean. It’s wonderful.

Last night we were awakened by a kind of thudding, and the windows rattled. The light from the lighthouse, which intemittently casts the windowframe in sharp relief against the opposite wall of the bedroom, seemed to be jumping around. “What’s that?” I asked Dan. Hailstorm? Earthquake? Armageddon?

“Fireworks,” he said.

I jumped up and looked out.

Fireworks. Glorious full-color fireworks in the sky over Sachem Pond.

It was 1:15 in the morning, and no one living on this end of the island but us.