On the way to Martha’s Vineyard, aboard the Sankaty freight boat, I caught these images of my angels and the sea.

Some of my favorite photographs are ones that Pam and I took twenty years ago when we began going to Martha’s Vineyard the summer that I was a choreographer-in-residence at The Yard in Chilmark.  That was the beginning of a love affair with the island and then twelve years spent year-round with our girls, who arrived from Nepal into the generous, welcoming arms of this beautiful community.

Coming back is bittersweet.  A part of me feels that this is really home, that I have been away and can breathe here in a way that I cannot on the mainland.  But six years ago, we wanted to give our girls a sense of the bigger world, and had begun to feel claustrophobic and crowded here. We left, full of certainty and optimism.

Now, on the cusp of another move, I wonder, is it time to return to my island home?  I walked from our girls’ godparent’s home this morning to Philbin beach and poured myself into the morning sea, beneath the Aquinnah cliffs.

The last verse of this poem, What’s Left,  seems to say it:

I know more or less
how to live through my life now.
But I want to know how to live what’s left
with my eyes open and my hands open;
I want to stand at the door in the rain
listening, sniffing, gaping.
Fearful and joyous,
like an idiot before God.

~ Kerrie Hardie ~