Our room in Teahan’s, Crowmane, County Kerry, looks out over the Castlemaine harbor. The tide is low, as are the clouds. Ireland is this gentle palette of blue-gray, gray, and green. There’s a field behind the inn where a hare lives, and in the surrounding countryside, amongst the smattering of houses, there are cow and sheep fields. It’s just lovely.

The girls are still asleep, but I’ve gone down for coffee. Mary, the house manager was there, tending to a table of tourists from America, men, looked like golfers to me. Soon she’ll run “one of the Ukrainians” into town. They’ve been hosting refugees here for months now. When we arrived yesterday, Mary told us about a family of Pakistanis who’s stayed for months, getting ferried about, only to leave suddenly without a thanks, and leaving their 17 year old son behind to pack 4 trunks of their belongings and travel to Dublin alone. Mary said the rest of the refugees come only with plastic bags of their belongings.

Last night a family arrived with their baby. I am sitting here in the room, appreciating the view, the coffee, and my daughters, safe and asleep in their bed.

My whole life I’ve known that my grandmother came to this country in 1920 with her parents. She was 8 years old. None of them spoke a word of English. I’ve often wondered what it must have been like to come into that unknown, unfamiliar land, and start brand new. What I’ve never considered, before tonight, is the unbearableness of what they had to have behind. How bad must life have been, for them to have packed up and come across an entire ocean, to an unknown world just for the possibility of finding something better, something safer, something perhaps, a bit less hateful? For the first time in my life, I have an inkling. I know what it feels like to be living in a homeland so unempathetic that I feel (and I fear) that the only conceivable option is to leave it behind. 

It never gets an easier, even after all this time. The sight of them, backs to me, as they head out the door. Hair still wet from the shower, bags of accessories in one hand, lunches in the other. Now, they carry their own car keys, too. Still, when they go, a little piece of me leaves with them, my heart no longer whole. I wish there was more to hang on to, the excited retelling of their day, what happened to whom, and the impromptu choruses of *Sweet. Baby James.” The days interminable until they return again. This week, Saturday, next not till Sunday. Until then the cords of my heart will remain taut, like the strings of their shoulder bags. 

Everyone keeps reminding me how hard empty nesting will be. I’m glad to see my kids launch themselves into the great unknown. But that can’t be harder than this. Wednesday morning cereal bowls sitting in the sink. Tonight there won’t be dinner plates, too.

I wish for them lights upon their ankles, illuminating each tiny step in front of them. I, too, will walk into the next hour, and the next hour, and the next, one at a time, wondering how they’re doing, what they’re thinking, whose heart is breaking, and who is is spilling over. I will sit in the unknowing. Until they return.

Making love with him 
is like bursting
with fragile hope.

His touches, ocean waves
Carrying and crashing,
Carrying and crashing.

Please continue. 
Breathless, trembling,
I want to go back in.

I kept on chopping the peppers into smaller and smaller bits, the minutes ticking by far slower than the water boiling on the stove, in preparation for the noodles that would bend and soften, yielding to its heat.

The blood in my veins threatened to gather speed upon the news, same for my heart, but I decided instead, to stay calm, wait it out, at least until we knew more, or had a real reason to worry.

The rhythm of the knife against the board reminded me of that day so long ago, when folding the baskets of laundry was all I could do. Reach in, pick it up, bring the corners together, over and over again, as if the repeated folding and pressing with my fingers could ease the mounting anxiety, as I sat alone on our plaid couch, listening to the baby monitor, and the news from the other room.

I spent hours that day, waiting, and wishing (hopelessly) that my husband would look for me and tell me that everything was going to be ok. (He didn’t come.) Instead, he watched those same, horrific images playing over and over again, endlessly, while I soothed out the wrinkles from his t-shirts.

This afternoon waiting for the all-clear, I made the pasta salad. Hopeful that tomorrow we’d be ok, safe inside the brick structure, that seemed so tenuous today.

The hotel room AC kicks on

It’s intermittent whir and hum

A reminder…

MY breathing will slow,

MY heart rate will temper.

Unlike the frog, too late aware

of the rising heat,

I’ve climbed out of the pot.

When I was a child

I knew everything

Why the grass was green 

and why the birds would sing

And as I got older 

I started to learn

That not everything we’re told 

Is necessarily so

A child who lives with laughter learns to be joyful

A child who lives with criticism learns to condemn

A child who is parented 

by someone who hasn’t yet learned 

is doomed to repeat these lessons over and over again

When I was a child 

I learned to be small

And whenever there was fighting, 

I had no voice at all

And as I grew up bigger I got loud,

And traveled far

Now that I am older

(And grayer and slow)

There’s not so many places 

I’d still like to go…

Some days I want to just sit here and watch the snow as it falls,

Or the rain, or the sun, 

Just stay within my own walls

I couldn’t wait to get bigger, 

I couldn’t wait to grow up

But now I want to be smaller, cause smaller’s big enough.

Someday barks in the distance

I call her, but she does not return

I cry myself to sleep

and wake up with salt stains

on my cheeks

I cannot return to the ocean

my skin is too raw from the surf 

I cannot go back to the place 

where you made me a-glow 

like the 7pm magical sunshine

and twist like the soft serve

that satisfied my tongue

I cannot turn my grief into beauty

All I can do is sit and remember 

summer nights drizzling like raspberries

down your chin

Thought I was 

a visionary:

That we’d be good;

Not ordinary

But I am I, and you are you,

despite plans and expectations,

Truth was truth–I was secondary

And life is life, 

so I walked away

Used all those years 

as a cautionary:

When it comes to love,

follow your heart, not your head

Insist the one 

laying beside you in bed

Will hold you dear

Honor you nightly,

And by day, 

will smile brightly,

Because they know 

how precious you are 

And so do you

Don’t stay stationary

Keep moving and growing 

and learning to love

Because you are are a gift 

from high up above

And if your mate 

doesn’t put you first

Remember why it is 

That you came to this earth:

You are kind, you are loving, 

you’re beautiful and good

And no one, not no one, 

can tell you you should

Take a second seat 

to anything else

All that really matters–

be true to yourself!

Next week they are splicing from my most sacred of space, testing the cells there to see what took place. What’s been spoiled by not-enough-love from the one who had promised me, all others above. To have and to hold, to respect, and to care, but nearly, not ever, going in there. Which led to those Wednesdays (two dollars per hour) when I gave him permission to take from my flower, to feed me, and water where blossoms would grow, but hardly, not ever, my husband would go. And so I said yes, even though I knew better, to prodding and thrusting, (the table getting wetter) knowing that soon, someday, there’d be prices to pay, for my quarterly, sinister, romps in the hay. And now these years later, the scalpel I’ll face, as I calmly confront the consequence of my disgrace. Because every misdeed, every heeded intention led me right here, exactly, no need to mention. On Tuesday, I’ll learn just how dearly I’ve paid, for deathly, bad decisions, made in those desperate days.