The Sea
To the left of me is the sea
and to the right are the gulls
those seagulls that had been here last year
waiting for us to return to them.
The breeze against the tide
is like waking up for the first time
so warm and not hot at all
an embrace;

I missed you come closer
You belong here.

The horizon is before me
and you are gone behind me
all that time waiting on me
The gulls look startled
They look away with shame
some would say disdain
What are you?
To come to this place alone?
I am a person and I am not even a person

The sea knows this
The sea can see
me
I am ashamed and I try to hide
Into the dunes
where the signs say STAY OUT
I crouch down like a child
like a waiting predator
or not.
I can’t decide.
I think you will find me
and the sounds of wings surround me
mocking me
singing and beating their questions at me
The sky is on fire with it.
2/21/14

Come Together

The older that I get the more it is all about moderation for me. And a little bit of common sense. It is true that the social justice causes are saved for the young to fight, they are much more passionate and good for them. I remember being 20, being filled with idealistic thoughts and being RIGHT..... all the time. So much so that I was willing to sacrifice a relationship with a family member or a neighbor to go deep, and talk politics. I remember how Gary’s conservative father and I would ruin dinner for everyone else with our discussion, bantering, sarcastic remarks and cynicism. I would like to take those moments back now that he is dead and gone but I can’t. I can however search for deeper meaning in middle age. I can listen to my 20 year old and her friends as they discuss the world in which they live in and they start to form their thoughts and opinions more and more everyday. I can look to my liberal mother and the ideas that she still holds dear, a carry over from a different time when love and flowers were all the rage and children were charged with breaking out and challenging the establishments that had made the rules for so many years before. I think most people are crazy now. This kind of feeling makes me feel more lonely than I have ever felt. When I look on my facebook wall, which I do way too often, it seems fueled with extreme thinking and propaganda. Is everyone really so extreme. Now that Roe vs Wade is celebrating its 40th birthday this issue is back in the forefront of papers everyone. It seems still fresh in many peoples thoughts and opinions. And there is no budging anywhere. You are either for abortion all the way through a pregnancy, stay away from my body, how dare you even suggest we take away this right, can’t even talk about this or you are on the other side, life begins the second of conception, no buts about it, we need to illegalize abortion outright throughout the entire country. This way of thinking seems crazy to me. Why can’t we ask women to make this decision in 12 weeks and support her decision, after all aren’t we judgemental enough. It seems reasonable to think that having an abortion when a fetus could probably live outside the womb might be kind of nuts but then again maybe it is just me. And then there are guns. It seems like most opinions are fairly extreme here too. It seems that either you are an ignorant redneck who likes to shoot anyone and anything that moves and needs to have the right to own assault weapons and a part of the constitional forces that rule our country or you are an intellectual snobby nosed liberal who thinks that you should be a vegetarian tree hugger and that all guns should be outlawed. I don’t know,what happened to live and let live. I know people who like to hunt and who own guns but it seems that they probably are not going to need an assault weapon to do this so what’s the deal? Really, what is the deal? Sometimes I think people just like controversy, a good fight. The real beauty with my job is that when things start to heat up in it I can just leave. I am a field clinician and I like to spend most of my time with my patients anyways. Sitting with people who are at the end of life puts all of these extremities in perspective. I watch men who fought for our country and saw battles I could not even imagine shrink before my eyes and what they are so often left with is just a great love of life, of the simple things and of the people around them. When my father in law lay dying for those weeks in the ICU in Boston, I never thought about our battles. I thought about the time he sent me up a check to help us out of some jam we had gotten in to. I thought about the light in his eyes when he held his first granddaughter Sadie beaming with joy. I thought of the way that I called him on 9/11 scared and confused and he did not banter with me, but reassured me, loved me. I’d like to be more loving. I will practice it today. I will make my resolution to not be so consumed with my own bondage of self and to be free from the walls that extremism builds around me, my friendships and my community.

Changes are inevitable, in fact the only thing you can really depend on in life is that things are going to change.... whether you like it or not. I don't know if I am imagining this or not but the older I get the more things change. I wonder if this is because I am more resistant to change now that I am older but really I dont think so, I think things are just changing. My children keep changing. Everytime I turn around I am at the store buying someone something bigger because they keep growing. Sadie is almost as tall as me and Nora is maybe not growing so much physically but she is growing mountains out of the seeds from her emotional journey. I watched Sadie in her first basketball game today and I couldn't imagine where she had come from, that somehow she is a part of me. At 12 I was ready to hide underneath any sort of covering I could find.... a blanket, an oversized pair of clothing, a heap of overgrown and snarly hair, anything would do. I was happy being part of the unseen. Sadie wants to be seen and wow, is she something to see. She is running up and down that court as if she will never fall down or never miss a basket. I thought for sure, best to take the safe route, I was never going to fall and I was never going to play. And Nora, oh I could kick myself over that one. I had set her on an unpredictable course for sure. Mistakes were made in sending her to that new experimental school.....risky risky risky. And now they have shut down and she had held it together pretty good until she could no longer hold it together any longer and big floods emerged in my bed all night long. Heartbreaking. Things are changing in me too. Things that used to seem so simple are no longer easy. Call it a mid life crisis or it could be all this time I spend living in my head on long car rides from patient to patient but I am starting to wonder about everything and fear nothing. That's not like me. And I want to move all the pieces around to appease me, to direct the path and to know where it is that I am going to end up at the end of the day. I was at a spinning class the other day and the instructor laid out the whole ride for us and it was easiest class that I have done in years. I knew exactly what to expect and I could manipulate the whole ride so that I could make it, survive. I am a survivor. Life doesn't work like that. No one comes down from the sky and tells me what my day is going to look like step by step. I go to Jonah's eye doctor appointments and on any given one I need to be poised for the worst and ready for the norm with a smile and some grace and money for ice cream on the way home. People could decide to move and leave me. Maybe that is why I am always dreaming of moving lately, running away. I will beat them at the quick. And then of course people die. Maybe that's why I do the work I do. I am inundated with the worse possible news one can receive all day long monday through friday. But I am alive. I feel so alive lately with all of these changes around me. I feel a swell of letting go of it all because I am realizing in the end it was never mine to box away anyhow. The flowers that I planted last spring are all dead now and gone and next spring there will be something new in their place and it will be different and it will be the same. Gloucester is a town that never wants to change and I married a man that is like a huge rock in a swirling rolling river of what is me and all that I have brought to him. I will be married to him 13 years this week and he continues to fix himself there again and again and again. While I rage around him and the kids grow and swell and expand and move he is a stayer. This is the season I have been told never to make any decisions in by every good friend I have ever known. So I won't quit my job, I won't move, I won't drop and add friends like they are grocery items. I will place myself next to Gary, a little less solid, definitely more fragile and I will wait for the spring.

Christmas Tree

The Christmas tree was so old and dry that the needles fell to the ground like rain when I slowly took each ornament off one by one.Feeling the part of the Grinch or Scrooge every year it does not get any easier putting this holiday to rest. I start with the feeling, it comes over me suddenly and swiftly. That tree needs to come down and it needs to come down within hours. I can no longer take it any longer. I remember that my mother always told me that she was that type of person that would be friends with you for a long time and she would forgive most ills but when it came down to it, it could just be a small little thing but one day she might just walk away. For the most simple thing. The tree gave me a little shudder as I walked through the door tonight, lost one too many peddles and that was it. The gig was up. I tucked Jonah in tonight even though he prefers his dad at night time and we got to read Rumplestilskin and Jack and the Beanstock and I realize that he tolerates me in these affairs. Like two days ago when we took the kids to the Museum of Science and got tickets to see Big Bird at the Planatarium and we were the only family in a sold out show that was not under the age of five. In fact our children, ages 12, 10 and 7 were quite blatantly older. And still Jonah oohed and ahhed at the show and answered Big Bird back when he shouted out things like "Which star do you think that is Elmo?" and sang Twinkle Twinkle little star. Nora told me a few weeks ago that she knew about Santa and I died a little inside. She made me promise that I would not tell her father who she suspects still believes and I agreed and I meant it.I still haven't told him. I put the tree out on the front lawn and looked up at the sky and watched as tiny white flakes touched my nose and my hair and my daughter looked out at me from her bedroom, so beautiful and bold, 12 and growing more and more in to a little woman everyday. She looked sweet and thoughtful and translucent to me. I could see in to her and around her and I wanted to apologize for all of the things that I have learned this week and this past year and a half. I want her to hold all the hope and dreams that she has now and to keep those flames hot and ready and yet I know how life happens and how painful it can be and will be for her and for all of us. It's the darkest time of the year. 20 6-7 year old children were murdered a few weeks ago and my 10 year old no longer believes in the magic of Christmas and I guess this season I sort of lost that magic too. Some part of it is gone and I wonder out loud in the snow if I will find it again. I wonder if it is buried in the winter air and will somehow blossom again or if it is gone forever. I hope for her and then I come inside and crawl in to bed for a long sleep.

Nora's school is closing. She is ten years old and in her new pink pjs that Santa brought her two days ago and laughing one minute showing me her new lego creation and the next moment she is in tears, hiding under her sleeve, peeking out only when I offer a drink, a tissue. It was a big mess of years of adults fighting and digging their heels in and now suddenly just like that, it is over. Next week we go to check out two schools for her to begin anew. One is a standard public school and the other is a Christian school that her siblings have come to call home. I told Nora that her school would close on Christmas. I know it sounds bad but really it wasn't. It was this quiet moment when it was just she and I drawing in her new drawing pad and it felt like the time. She cried and then she was back again, eating pie with my mother in law, talking about the present that Santa brought for her. And the next day I took this picture and how perfect for Nora. Such a bright star in our home, always with such big laughter or big crocodile tears. Trying to keep her young, trying to keep her safe, sometimes it feels like a full time job. If I think about it, I cant believe what has been delivered this week. Too many presents, so much that I could just throw it all out the window and scream. So much that I had to leave the house just to relax today. This week delivered a devastated 22 year old on my couch, so hurt by life, so fragile. And then there is the reminders however subtle that they are, people are missing in our lives. It just doesn't seem right. I want to be happy and joyous and free and it is a full time job to do that part all day long. What I really want is to grab on to my children, pack them away and move somewhere far far away. A place where sadness does not happen, children are always kind and God is real. For tonight I will tuck them in and tell them I love them and dream of little babies and sweet lullabies.

Frances Crombie CROMBIE, Frances Mrs. Frances Eileen (O'Brien) Crombie, 91 died Thursday, (March 9, 2006), at Connecticut Hospice in Branford. She was the widow of David J. Crombie. She resided at Brighton Gardens in Woodbridge. Frances was born in Norfolk, October 13, 1914, the daughter of the late Timothy J. O'Brien of Norfolk and Elizabeth (Moore) O'Brien of Galway Ireland. She attended the Gilbert School in Winsted. Prior to her marriage, she worked at Best & Co. in NYC and at Underwood Typewriter in Hartford She was married on August 31, 1940 at Immaculate Conception Church in Norfolk. Her late husband, David, was the Executive Vice President for the former Trans World Airlines (TWA) in New York City. Frances and her family lived in Hartford then Canton and moved to Stamford in 1955. After the death of her husband, she moved to New Canaan in 1980. Frances adored her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and her many friends. She loved to travel around the world and volunteered at the Waveny Care Center in New Canaan. She leaves four sons David (Paula) of New Haven, Michael (Carol) of Greensboro, NC, Timothy (Ana) Crombie of Tarrytown, NY, Nicholas (Jill) of Dallas, TX; three daughters, Alison (Andy) Gunsberg of Rochester Hills, MI, Jeanne Crombie Rhodes (Terry) of Stamford and Pamela Crombie Calman (Michael) of Harrison, NY. She leaves 11 grandchildren, Jennifer Davis of Raleigh, NC, Noelle Crombie of Portland, OR, Alison Kinnahan of Washington, DC, Amy Worland of Charlotte, NC, Ben Gunsberg of Ann Arbor, MI, Kelli Backstrom and Colleen Crombie of Gloucester, MA, Paul Gunsberg of Boston, MA, Rebecca Calman of Harrison, NY, Charlotte Rhodes of Stamford and Cullen Crombie of Dallas, TX. She leaves a sister, Helen McEnroe of New Britain. She was predeceased by her sisters, Mary O'Brien, Margaret Tomlinson and her twin Elizabeth Roche and a brother, Joseph O'Brien. Frances leaves several nieces and nephews and eleven great grandchildren. The family would like to thank Jonathan E. Gage, MD and the nurses and staff on the cardiac floor at Yale-New Haven Hospital for their compassionate care. Donations in her memory may be made to Yale-New Haven Hospital, Family Need Fund, 20 York St., New Haven, CT, 06504. Her funeral will be TODAY at 9:30 a.m. from the Molloy Funeral Home, 906 Farmington Ave., West Hartford, with a Mass of Christian Burial at 10:30 a.m. at The Cathedral of St. Joseph, 140 Farmington Ave., Hartford. Burial will be in Mt. St. Benedict Cemetery, Bloomfield. Online expressions of sympathy may be made at www.molloyfuneralhome.com Published in the Hartford Courant on 3/11/2006.

Jonah leaned back in to the opthomologist's chair with the ease of a a newborn reclining in to their mother's welcoming embrace. He trusts this Doctor, he told me that his hands are gentle and his voice is soft. I had not recognized that Jonah thought about things like the tone and quality of someone's voice... but he had. Blood shot and oozing, he told me his tears tasted of salt and something else he couldnt quite put his finger on, puffy and defeated was his eye. His spirit was good. He was up for talking about his day and showing Dr Mukei his action figure and nodding to his questions. I knew it had been five days since his retinal surgery but couldnt belive it had only been five days since his retinal surgery. I had come to a secret agreement with myself not to think positively, not to hope for sight. I had signed up for the summer camps for the special kids who in fact are very special but Jonah had not been one of them in my eyes (my eyes) until this year... and then he was. But the post op nurse sat with glee in her eyes (her eyes ) telling me, "wait until tomorrow! Wait until next week! Wait until you see what will happen!" I was all of the sudden filled up with that bubbley and extractable concoction of delight, of flowers that come as predicted and a straight path in to the city, no stops, no traffic, hope. I was so optimistic in fact that I thought that maybe he didnt belong in the special kids camp, maybe I should cancel. But that pesky pragmatic self that I am always so relieved to have garnished along with me all these years, showed up. Of course I should keep him just where he is. As he leaned back in the chair, weird alien masked doctor's peering in to his sightless eye, telling him to look this way and that and me holding my breath and tapping my over caffeinated foot and checking my cell phone for a call because someone could be calling to break the thought process that is going on in my head. Jonah can't see. He can't see your fingers, he can't see the letters and he can't see my face out of that left eye so stop your trying and let me at him. Let me put him back in the baby carriage and walk him around town and go back to an easier time. Be grateful, be grateful. Be thankful for that one eye. Be grateful for John's healthier lung and his chance at a transplant. I cant bring myself to do it today. The realist in me, that ole pragmatist tells me, keep guard, be wary. Dr Sorkin told me this would happen five years ago but I know how to block it all out. I am great at denial. That won't happen to us. So when it happens to his right eye and the lights go out for him I will be left to wonder, "Does he remember the look on my face in the morning when he cuddles with me or the glee I showed him while we rode through A Small World at Disney?" For today we take the elevator down and he doesnt want to push the button. He is content to hold my hand and when we get to the door and it is raining he is not surprised and I am not surprised anymore either.