Crossing The Sound

I am on the Bridgeport, CT ferry traveling across Long Island Sound to Port Jefferson, N Y.  I’m going to visit my friend, Margaret, in East Hampton. It’s like going home. I can’t wait to be driving through Bridgehampton, my home for fourteen years. I left there in 1993 and I still get a nostalgic rush as I drive along the Main Street. Except for The Candy Kitchen— the local coffee shop--Bridgehampton has changed a lot since the emergence of “The Hamptons.” That is the reason I left. But still . . .

The enormous, white, car ferry with the bad food on offer holds memories, too. With much of my family in Connecticut, I came back and forth across Long Island Sound on this boat often: traveling in all seasons and in all kinds of weather.

This early Friday morning the ferry is unusually quiet; there are lots of empty seats. I’ve been on the ferry with dogs, cats in cages, families with assorted children, teenagers with tattoos, ripped jeans and shocking piercings, all of us slipping and sliding across the floor, quite unable to do anything but hang on and pray for the 1 hour and 15 minute trip to be over. Today’s ride is smooth, just a gentle rocking, which I quite like. Reminds me that I am on a boat: always a good thing for me.

Some ferry rides have been difficult in ways other than stormy weather. Even if the external weather was sparkling and clear, I’ve had rides when my internal weather was worse than any turbulence the sea could kick up. 

Take for instance the time on a Friday morning in the fall of 1987 when I raced in my car from Bridgehampton to Port Jefferson to catch the earliest ferry to Bridgeport because my mother had died. My father called me from Southport at 6:00 AM to tell me. We knew she was near the end. I had been there the weekend before, along with my brother who had come from California to see her one last time. Thank God we had said goodbye. She and I had spent precious hours together planning her memorial service. She had chosen the readings and we had laughed and contrived the service to suit her perfectly: a spiritual, non-religious service tailored for Mom. And I would lead it. Daunting, but I felt so honored to be entrusted with her wishes.

All the way across the Sound that morning a mantra repeating itself in my head: I don’t have a mother any more. I don’t have a mother any more. Choking back the tears. Not wanting people to see me sobbing helplessly and wondering if they should ask me if I was OK. Which I clearly was not, but didn’t want anyone to know.

My mother is dead . . . my mother is dead . . .

I was on this ferry, too, during the winter of 1992 when my father, at 87, had a series of strokes and was comatose in his bed at home. I never had a chance to say goodbye to Dad. I rode the ferry once again to join my brother and sister in order to decide what the next steps for Dad should be. He had signed a Living Will. “No unusual measures.”

Although I remember the trip across the water in February as “rock and roll,” my emotional state superseded the physical discomfort of the boat. What were we to do? Take out the tubes? My father could no longer swallow. He was being kept alive with a hydrating IV. Living Will, notwithstanding, as my brother had put it to me on the phone, “Are we supposed to kill him?” Oh God!

My whirling mind made that rolling boat seem like child’s play.

On the urging of Dad’s loyal and loving doctor, we let our father go: one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

 Finishing this blog on the ferry churning back towards CT after the holiday weekend.

 I stop writing for a while and gaze around at the other passengers. The ferry is crowded this day. All ages: a cluster of energetic twenty-something boys nearby, and in my row are several dogs straining at leashes. Across, in a booth, a smiling grandmother plays a board game with her two young grandchildren. Most passengers are on their cell phones or like me, on their computers. Some are munching the gluey cheese tacos available on board.

 I am wondering how many passengers are on this watery journey with heavy hearts, going toward something they’d rather not deal with: a family crisis, a medical issue, a troublesome job situation. I will never know, but I can’t help imagining that somehow the ferry, so much a part of life on Long Island Sound, has, all these years, transported and absorbed vast quantities of unspoken emotional distress—and joy. Back and forth, across the wide waters of The Sound, on its regular schedule, it will continue to do so forever.