Carly-
Last week I moved off the island for the winter, it was a sad time, saying goodbye to the trees, rocks, and landscape that I love. I pulled out the last of the vegetables, covered the boat and locked the windows and doors. For the past nine years it has fallen to me to be the last to leave the island. I run though the check list and make sure that everything is closed and battened down for the long winter, and with a finally turn of the head I say goodbye and head across the harbor.
I am in Rockland now and life has taken on a different pace, with different routines and a lot more people though less stars. My father is visiting from South Africa. This is a strange in-between visit. He is here to say goodbye. He spends the day an hour away in a hospital, coming back to the house when it is dark and he is quite. His father, my grandfather is not doing well. He is having troubles with his lungs, heart, kidneys. The organs and systems which once made him strong, a force to be reckoned with, are now slowing. Change is inevitable, wether it be the steadying chill in the air deepening to a frost, the strong storm surge moving roads and buildings, or the quiet breath of a man coming face to face with the march of time. This year the fall has been harder, the winter seems a little bleaker, the promise of spring seems further away. We are all trying to linger in the space where we find ourselves but time is running out and change occurs no matter how we deny it or wish it otherwise.
Two Chicks on an Island 