You may have read these words at thisishard.substack.com. I thought they may be helpful here, too.

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Nancy and I go to Paradise (a town in Michigan) every year or two in October. It’s a short trip between hospital Tuesdays and hospital Sundays. But it’s important to us.

This year, we took a friend along. We showed her the quiet things we do. We look at Lake Superior. We look at Tahquamenon Falls. We look at Whitefish Bay off Lake Superior. We look the Soo Locks. We look at the water where the Tahquamenon River flows into Whitefish Bay. We eat. We read.

Lots of water. Lots of trying to be quiet.

We try to watch as many sunsets and sunrises over the waters as we can.

Saturday morning was wet and cloudy, but we wanted to see if there was any glow of sunrise across the bay. One last glimpse before we headed back to Fort Wayne.

There were clouds. There is, if you look closely at the picture above, the tiniest shading of pink up in the clouds. But it takes imagination and wishfulness to see.

I thought about being disappointed. I love to see the pink turning red, and the sun edging above the horizon. It makes a great photo.

But I, and then we, stood on the hill behind the Paradise Community Center, looking at the leaves, listening to the waves on the beach below. We were quiet. The sky was quiet. The traffic (a car every five minutes) was quieter than usual.

The colors of a sunrise would have screamed too loud.

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We look for events, for splashes, for postable moments. We look for lessons. What we may need is something quieter, less spectacular. We may need a cloudy morning with coffee and companions at arms-length. Where the sun infuses but doesn’t exclaim.