Tam and I followed one of our usual routes this morning: down Pine Hill, around the Nat’s Farm field (which Mermaid Farm just hayed about half of), to the bike path and home. It’s never exactly the same, but this morning was different: the West Tisbury School was having its end-of-school field day.

This included a fun run involving the younger classes, along the bike path, turn right, down the north side of the Nat’s Farm field, turn right again onto the path through the woods that leads back toward the school, then turn right again to return to the bike path, where their classmates were waiting. Older students stood at each turn to point the way.

Needless to say, Tam found this extremely exciting. We pulled off the path a little way, into the brush. I asked him to sit and kept the treats coming while we watched the runners pass, in ones, twos, threes, and bunches, interspersed with their teachers and aides. Most were wearing orange T-shirts. One kid asked if he was a wolf. Several thought he might be a husky. I kept saying “He’s a malamute.” More than one said he was beautiful.

I watched the kids running, some taking it more seriously than others but all apparently having a good time, and wondered: Are this kids in first grade, second grade, maybe third? Whatever, they’re clearly between the ages of the first-graders killed in Newtown in 2012 and the fourth-graders killed in Uvalde last month. Full of life, full of promise. Beautiful.

I got home to the news that the Supreme Court of the U.S. had indeed overturned Roe v. Wade. Their reasoning was about as ridiculous as that in the New York gun law decision that came down yesterday. And I wondered: Do those justices ever see, really see, the faces of the people whose lives their words affect so profoundly?