"We were joined by a few other seal-sitters — Ned, a fireman, and Aimee, his nine-year-old daughter. Aimee was here every day looking for her pup, Ned told us. 'It's what she cares about most.' Softly he added, 'It's kind of saving her life right now.'

"I did not ask why. Even though we seal-sitters spend hours on the beach together, we are careful not to pry into each other's lives. Sooner or later the hours on the beach and the intimacy with these wild animals make friends of us all. I trusted that as the season progressed I would know why Aimee needed saving.

" 'You know, we think we're saving the seals,' Robin, our tireless and talented photographer, told me one day. Robin's photos help identify and document illness, bullet wounds, and other human-caused injuries. 'But really, the seals are also saving us.'

"She was right. As neighbors have bonded together to watch over and share the beach with seal pups, we've come closer together. During the off-season we still seek one another out. We have helped one another through divorces, job loss, retirement, broken bones, and illness. When I had a bad cold, seal-sitters dropped off chicken soup along with daily seal pup photos. Janette, one of the most diligent seal-sitters, organized a Sex and the City-style outing with a sleek black stretch limo to fit all of us in as we sipped champagne and rested up from a particularly stressful week on the beach.

"Sometimes seal sitting strikes me as a bit like the church socials of my childhood. Though not bonded by religion or politics, we are still a little 'fellowship of the believers,' as my mother calls her Women's Missionary Union. As in the original meaning of the word religion, 'to bind together,' the neighborhood naturalists are close-knit, though we all have such different takes on faith, politics, and even culture. We joke that if it weren't for the seals we would never have found each other.

"My niece and her husband studied the pup as he flopped a little closer to the surf and scanned the waves. 'It's like a secret,' Elizabeth said, softly so as not to disturb George. 'Knowing how to look, I mean, really knowing how to see the world with others . . . besides just us . . . here.'

"As we watched the golden pup stretch and preen and yawn, I remembered my brother, Elizabeth's father, telling me, 'You know, all those hours that you wait on the beach for the mother seal to return to her pup . . . well, isn't that kind of like the way we Christians wait for Christ to return for us and restore heaven here on earth?'

"I had never thought of it that way — and with my upbringing I should have. But now, watching this pup, I thought it made perfect sense.

" 'Hey, little buddy,' Alec breathed. 'Hope you make it.'

" 'We'll also pray for this pup,' Elizabeth whispered.

"And then the newlyweds held the newly weaned pup in their true and tender gaze."