Wheeling Gull Isle we sing, “look at all this love we’ve found”

She shakes her head no when she's asked if help is necessary. She never needs help! She is Dinah, master scavenger, expert beachcomber, supreme warrior woman!

And she's quick to go to town, too; beneath a Sitka spruce, she finds the lone alabaster feather of what must have belonged to a seagull, but instead, she exclaims, Daddy! Angel wing! with a pointed paw. She nabs it and places it at the start of her pile. She had decided it would be for Malakai!

Close to the shoreline, after digging beneath a gravel bed smoothed by the sea, she finds a hunk of petrified wood. Rings of russet that blend with cool grays; a little object much older than she could ever conjure. This would be for Simeon, because, in her words, it looks like him.

On a log that rests just beneath a rocky cliff, she finds the shell of a cicada, golden and translucent, a perfect sculpture of the creature it came from. This would be for Judah - she'd made a habit of bringing him live bugs, but for today, he gets the keepsake of one. It's carried while being balanced atop her nose so that her little teeth don't crush it.

For Mama, she finds a sand dollar when a wave pulls back and reveals it, nestled in the sand. Dunking it under the water, she has Daddy help her count the rounded points of the star at its center. It's a little heavy compared to her other finds, but she is gentle and patient.

And last but not least, her gift for Daddy: a conch shell, painted with sherbet and cream, and when she shows it to him, she proudly says it looks just like him, and names it Daddy Jr.

By the time her pile of five is complete and seated on the slanted surface of a rock to dry off in the sun, she is lazing beside her Daddy, nose pointed skyward and a Dinah-shaped print in the sand that she lays in. Belly warmed by the sun with her paws tucked close to her chest, she swivels to look at him. Daddy? she asks, with that typical tooth-rotting sweetness, who is God?