Homecoming

“…and then you’re gone, and then you’re gone, and then you’re gone…”  (Violet Weston, August: Osage County by Tracy Letts)

Someone I love is gone. So many I love are now gone.

I venture to find her. I know where to go — I’ve made this journey hundreds of times sporting a younger face, more nimble feet. The day is bright, cold. There’s no one else about. Or so it seems. I park my ancient truck, gussied up in Grunden’s catchphrases, along the familiar seawall. Get out, get up, walk it. I know every crack — the oldest crevasses anyway. Childhood place. Coming of Age place. Much loved place.

I climb down stepping more gingerly than I hoped. Sense memory guides me but knees lack trust once a given. I trek onward slowly, outward bound. I don’t want to miss any sign that might appear along the way. A lobster trap, ruined, in a muddle on a group of rounded granite boulders wearing extravagant seaweed locks. Huge hen clamshells, cracked open, reveal their oozy dead. A child’s blue plastic beach shovel, worn to shredded by relentless surf.

Suddenly, I’m not alone. A man, with a camera —  Nikon? — skulks toward the snarled and twisted wire trap, poised to shoot. He jars me out of my sweet solitude, but, I press on. How many times have I made this passage? Sometimes, swiftly and laughing, others, with more care, overturning small rocks along the way, snatching green crabs from their damp lairs then dumping them into my teeming bucket as it swings from my gangly arm.

My Everest awaits. Tall, black, and barren and, at tide’s ebb, exposed in the chilly sun as it has been every six hours or so for, how long? Joyous anticipation builds at my final approach. I cross the divide, metamorphic rock cleft in two by ancient forces. I scale the last three magnificent algae strewn steps to the pinnacle of Starfish Rock. Our Starfish Rock. “Starfish” to those who, here, came, wildly, of age.

Once more, I stand atop, survey Fisherman’s Cove. Place of my youth. Place of Home. Place of Peace and Connection. Most familiar, Favorite Place on Earth. I turn my gaze to shore. I see my aunt’s house — mythical place of childhood. “The House On The Point.” Our House On The Point. A few years back, in much greater age, we had all gasped: “She bought The House On The Point?!” Incredulity. Rapturous disbelief! And then, it was Her House On The Point!

The wind shifts. The cold evaporates, momentarily; I feel her, her warmth, her wit. A writer she was, professional writer. Oh, how I wish she wrote of her own life but it was all horses and trainers, divers and swimmers — traveling the world for Sports Illustrated, she wrote about the very best. So New York was she until she came home, to New England, to the ocean she loved. And, to us. I hear her voice, always with the perfect zinger, the razor-sharp quip — that’d take you down or fill you up with a single line. She is here now. She is okay. I want to stay.

But the tide turns.

Oh, to be young again. To wait excitedly, with not a little terror, for the incoming tide. Wait for it to strand us — even for a moment. The churning surf rushes in, higher and higher. Who will dare be last to cross the treacherous divide? The salty brine sluices in great deep spasms, waves doing the moon’s eternal bidding. Time’s running out — go now or stay and swim, be pounded by the insistent swells. Covered in salt and slipping on ragweed, laughing and triumphant, we returned to shore. Always, returned to shore.

I will return to shore. I will return. I will.

Until I’m gone.

Copyright © 2025 Lisa Stathoplos, Chimera/A Shapeshifter’s Journey