Reads Poems

Family

I grew up in the midst of 50 or so first cousins dristributed between the families of my mother (Conlin) and father. Two of my mother's seven sisters became nuns the others married men named: Conlin women married men named Bennett, Crawford, Heintz, McCabe, and Walsh; my father's two sisters married men named Hall and Barry!

Cape Cod 2021, Life on the Edge

Show of hands, please – who wants the window on car rides, goes for an aisle seat in the theatre? Me too! That identifies us as the brave people, the ones who enjoy life on the edge. (Click to enlarge/slideshow)

Instead of peering down the rabbit hole of psycho-genetics, I’m content to declare that my inner-edgieness is a birth-effect, the natural result of being born on the edge – the southeast edge of Lake Ontario, in a place that once also graced the northwest edge of these United States.

The shore of that lake would be the locale of most summertime adventure, all the way until 1960, when I was eleven and my family vacationed on Cape Cod, which is as edgy a place as you could imagine!

This is the northern terminus of the Cape Cod Canal, in Sandwich, home also to the Shawme-Crowell state park. Where I’ve parked my chair is the last patch of shade before the Canary Islands!