Ocean View

By Jude Rittenhouse

Only two of the past dozen winters have been consistently snowy here on Rhode Island’s shore. We often get rain while snow is falling to the north but, as 2009 flowed into 2010, temperatures got stuck below freezing. Estuaries and salt ponds clogged with ice. On days like this one, snow stretches its white disguise interrupted only by stone walls and trees. Beyond this illusion of a black and white landscape, ocean wears a perfect blue, reflecting an unrelenting cloudless sky. NPR reports that produce and citrus crops in Florida will suffer from this extended cold enveloping the entire East Coast. How little control we humans have, despite all our technology, despite our desire for certainty.
Having previously lived in Ohio’s snowbelt, Chicago, Boulder, and Milwaukee; I’m almost growing used to the kind of skin-ripping cold I knew before my life on this more moderate coast. I’m reminded how humans can become accustomed to and bear almost anything. Almost. Yesterday, my neighbor told me she had received a late-night call, informing her that her youngest brother had committed suicide. This call came soon after a crisis in her mother’s health that required a transfer to ICU. After years of a solitary life plagued by excruciating daily headaches, possibly around the time his mother’s health deteriorated and crashed, this man felt he could bear no more. I think of his pain, his mother’s, his sisters’ and brother’s. Extremities of physical and emotional pain need companionship. Although my neighbor and I rarely connect, we feel comforted, knowing that we are nearby in emergencies—a word so akin to the plural form of emergence.

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