After you left fifth grade did flax ever once cross your mind again?

Two years ago I wrote a Gazette column about the boxes in my basement — or to be more precise (and pathetic), the boxes in our basements.

When I look up at the moon I see the past, in particular 46 years ago and a New York Times headline that read Men Walk On Moon. No exclamation point, just a fact of life from Earth.

We aren’t shopping yet, but my wife and I are definitely thinking about getting another dog. We really miss our yellow lab, Floyd.

More than a decade ago, a landscape architect friend from Rhode Island brought us a house-warming gift when we had a cottage in Menemsha.

Somewhere at the end of the 1970s I was sitting with a few friends at the edge of the nude beach at Lucy Vincent discussing the future. Our futures.