Fog

We sailed from Brooklyn, New York, bound for Southampton, England, carrying with us the hope that this voyage would offer a much-needed respite after two and a half years marked by illness, uncertainty, and exhaustion.

Instead, the Atlantic greeted us with high seas, relentless rain, and an unyielding blanket of fog.

The deck chairs I had imagined sinking into remained wet and empty. There would be no afternoons basking in the warmth of the sun, no evenings watching the stars emerge one by one, no full moon shimmering across a calm sea. At first, I was deeply disappointed. Peter and I both longed for dry air, gentle breezes, and sunshine that might somehow soothe bodies and spirits worn thin.

But the sea had another lesson to offer.

As the days unfolded, I began to think about the symbolism of traveling through fog. My vision was obscured, the horizon invisible, and yet the ship continued steadily toward its destination. It occurred to me that perhaps this was where I still found myself—not lost, but in process. Still moving forward, even though I could not yet see what lay ahead.

There is a quiet invitation in fog.

It asks us to surrender certainty.

To trust the unseen.

To stop demanding that life reveal itself all at once.

I could continue stamping my foot at the weather, lamenting the sunshine I believed had been stolen from me, or I could remember that the sun, the stars, and the moon had not disappeared at all. They were simply hidden beyond the clouds, faithfully occupying the same sky they had always inhabited.

Not everything that is hidden is absent.

There is comfort in that realization.

As I surrendered to the weather instead of resisting it, the fog became less an obstacle and more an incubator. Wrapped in its mystery, thoughts and memories surfaced that perhaps would never have emerged beneath a cloudless sky.

It was then that my grandmother came to me.

She had crossed this same ocean more than a century ago, leaving Ireland for a new life in America. I found myself wondering what her own voyage had been like. Had she stood on deck searching for the first glimpse of land? Had she been frightened? Homesick? Filled with hope? I know remarkably little about that crossing or about the young woman she was before life demanded so much of her.

I picture her arriving in New York, eventually settling with her family on West 67th Street, where Lincoln Center now stands. In my mind's eye I see the portrait taken before her marriage—a beautiful young woman whose face still carries possibility.

By every account she was a woman of extraordinary kindness. She cared for family and neighbors, quietly helping those in need while raising five children alongside a husband whose alcoholism and unpredictable rages left deep wounds within the family. She was often described as a saint.

But saints are often remembered for what they gave others, not for what they themselves longed for.

Was she happy?

What sustained her?

What dreams did she quietly lay aside?

These are questions I will never be able to ask.

What I do know is that the emotional currents flowing through generations are powerful. My grandmother's life shaped my mother's. My mother's shaped mine. Mine has, in turn, shaped my daughters, though I hope with greater awareness and gentleness.

Healing the maternal lineage has become one of the central works of my life.

For me, the inheritance was not only grief but also unexpressed rage. Anger was frightening. Sadness felt unsafe. My mother's pain often erupted without warning, and as children we learned to make ourselves as small and invisible as possible in hopes of escaping its reach. That smallness stayed with me for decades.

Only now, as I prepare to turn seventy, do I feel myself stepping fully into the light.

Not because I no longer fear another person's disapproval, but because I have finally decided it is no longer worth hiding from it.

I sometimes wish I had understood these things earlier, while my daughters were growing up. Yet I also know that healing is not confined to one generation. They continue to teach me courage as I watch them build their own lives with honesty, tenderness, and strength. In many ways, they have helped guide me out of the emotional fog that surrounded my childhood and into a place where I can finally see more clearly.

As our ship nears the end of its voyage, the fog still lingers over the sea.

The horizon remains hidden.

And yet something within me has cleared.

Perhaps that has been the real journey all along.

I may never know exactly what my grandmother carried across this ocean, but I know what I am choosing to carry forward.

The fog has not lifted.

Only my way of seeing has changed.