Another of My Favorite Words

Several months ago, I allowed myself little verbal self-indulgence by writing about a few of my favorite words. As summer was ending, I encountered another of my old friends on a beach in Kittery, Maine: detritus.

“Detritus” has one meaning for me: seaweed left on the beach by the outgoing tide.

Just conjuring the word in my mind brings the smell of salt and fish and ocean–and the blue, blue sky of a day on the beach when childhood would never end.