Bodies of Water Chapter 5 - Clinging

A Memoir of Grief, Generational Repair, and Coming Home to Myself

Chapter 5
Clinging

July 3, 2003

A year earlier, on my first visit to the island, the ferry lurched gently toward the small dock, and I noticed the name of the terminal: Otter Bay. It felt like a quiet nudge from the universe. Otters—river otters—had been my favorite animal since I was three. While the other preschoolers played puppies and kittens, I was always a river otter, slipping through imagined streams. I didn’t even know what sound they made—just that they felt like mine.

Seeing that name, I thought: this is it. This is the place. This is the life I’m supposed to step into.

Even before I set foot on the island, something in me settled. I felt more at home in those first few minutes than I had anywhere else.

Now, a year later, I was returning—not as a guest, but as a resident.

It was dark. And I wasn’t driving—Randy was, the roads were not familiar yet, still a twisting maze through trees with occasional glimpses of water, fields, and the sky like a trail above. The day had been packed with last-minute tasks, emotional goodbyes—Sidra’s best friend sobbing as she chased our car down the street when we pulled away from Seattle that morning—and all the scattered details that come with leaving one life behind to begin another. We’d just barely made the 7 p.m. ferry. Now, as we rolled off the boat, the island stretched ahead in silhouette, hushed and unfamiliar. For the first time, it felt real. Not a dream. Not a hope. Real.

One of those final tasks that afternoon had been to get married.

Randy insisted we keep it a secret. It’s not the real wedding, he said. It’s just for smoother immigration. He promised we’d have a “real” one later, after we were settled. Having people know we were already married would spoil it for the actual wedding, he thought. I agreed, reluctantly—thinking, at the very least, Sidra would know. And I could tell my mom. And Lucy.

But when I said that out loud, he grabbed my upper arm. Hard.

He leaned in—his face just inches from mine—and through clenched teeth said, “If you tell anyone about this, our relationship is over.”

I felt like I’d been slapped. Who was this man? No one in my life had ever spoken to me that way. Why the secrecy? What was the big deal? I tried to ask, to make sense of it, but he cut me off: “Sidra will tell everyone, and you don’t want to ruin the special occasion when we have a wedding, do you?”

But that didn’t explain my mom. Or Lucy. They lived in different countries. They weren’t going to spoil anything. I shared everything with Lucy.

“But my mom—”
“NO. TELL NO ONE.”

I clamped my mouth shut. My heart pounded. My eyes stung. It didn’t make sense.

The ceremony had been earlier that afternoon, in the living room of the only judge Randy could get on short notice—it was a Saturday, after all. Because he’d already insisted Sidra not know, I asked the judge’s wife to take her out to the back porch with some crayons and a coloring book. A friend from grad school, who happened to live nearby, came to serve as one witness. The judge’s wife was the other.

It was over in minutes. I felt giddy—nervous, but excited. I kept glancing at Randy, hoping for a smile, a flicker of shared joy. But his face was blank. Cold. Business-like. As soon as the papers were signed, he turned away and started packing up our things.

I went to get Sidra. She was cheerful and unsuspecting, her picture half-colored. She had no idea she’d just gotten a stepfather.

We still had errands to run before catching the ferry.

Now, hours later, as we drove off the boat into the dark hush of the island, it hit me in a new way. What had I just done?

Still, I told myself it would get better. It had to. Surely, it would.

The next day, we were introduced to new friends by a family we’d met on the ferry. As it turned out, we lived just a few blocks from their grandparents’ summer home—an upscale, modern house with pristine gardens that looked slightly absurd against the island’s wild backdrop. Brambles threatened to overtake everything, pressing in on the neatly trimmed azaleas and rhododendrons valiantly holding their ground in the beauty bark.

But this family also knew the folks at the end of the street on the cul-de-sac, in a house that looked like it was held together by sheer will—boards leaning at odd angles, shingles missing, the porch sagging under its own weight. That’s where we met Tina and her kids: Sandra, who was Sidra’s age, and Colin, a few years younger.

I didn’t know it then, but this family would become one of our closest on the island. And that dilapidated house, stitched together with whatever was on hand, would soon feel like one of the warmest, most welcoming places I knew.

One thing I learned fast: houses on the island require constant attention. The wet, salty air gnaws at wood and paint, moss creeps onto every surface, and mold quietly blooms the moment you look away. Some families kept up. Some didn’t. They adapted, made do, found warmth anyway.

There were a lot of houses like that on the island—weathered, imperfect, and still standing.

When Tina learned it was Sidra’s and my first full day on the island, she immediately invited us to go blackberry picking. She said it with a wide smile and a kind of field-marshal certainty: “Go grab your coats—I’ll get the ladder.”

Coats? Ladder? I wondered.

I didn’t have to wonder long. Tina drove us along winding roads that still felt like a maze to me. We passed The Drift—one of the few landmarks I recognized—then turned off toward another part of the island. There, a narrow trail cut through towering blackberry brambles, easily fourteen feet high and heavy with late-season fruit. The path led down to a rocky little beach, framed by two rugged outcroppings, seaweed draped across the stones like ribbons.

I’d never picked blackberries so aggressively in my life.

Tina knew what she was doing. She leaned the ladder into the dense thicket until it tilted in at an angle, practically horizontal. Then she climbed—fearlessly—out over the brush, deep into the heart of the brambles where the biggest, ripest berries waited, untouched. I was impressed. And that gave way to inspiration, as I quickly followed suit from where I could reach.

We took turns on the ladder, or reached in from the edges, thorns clinging to our coats so our skin didn’t get torn. Ah, I thought. So that’s what the coats are for.

The kids helped for a while, but soon ran off down to the beach to explore. I was grateful. On our very first day, both Sidra and I were already making friends.

As we picked, I found myself telling Trish everything—about just finishing my Master’s in Clinical Psychology, my specialization in prenatal and perinatal trauma, and the ways I’d been trained to listen for the earliest roots of pain and resilience.

Tina, a massage therapist, was fascinated. She asked questions, eager to understand more, happy to pick my brain as we picked fruit.

I couldn’t work yet—immigration rules meant two years of waiting—but it felt good to speak from that place in me. To name who I was becoming, even if I couldn’t live it out fully yet. I was still clinging to that vision of myself, trying to keep it alive in the in-between.

The following day, Sidra and I visited the island’s tiny library. As lifelong lovers of libraries, it was bound to be one of our first stops—to get our cards, browse the shelves, and feel that familiar hush of possibility.

While we were there, we came across a small window-box exhibit about a prehistoric First Peoples tribe, their presence revealed through the artifacts on display. What stunned me most was learning that this tribe had once summered beside the very beach at one of Randy’s properties—the one on Canal Road we simply called “Canal.”

I stood there filled with wonder, struck by the depth of the land’s history—and suddenly, I felt something more than inspired as I remembered the places my dad had taken us camping as a child, with old indigenous names, rich histories…Chewuch River, Okanogan, Entiat. I felt connected. Anchored.

It was at the library where I met Gemma. She was curious about midwifery, a path I’d once been passionate about myself before learning, through life as a doula, that I wasn’t cut out for being on-call. We clicked immediately, sharing stories while her young stepdaughter, Kali, and Sidra shyly bonded nearby. Kali was petite and cautious in her friendship-making—so different from Sandra’s bold energy the day before—but something about their quiet temperaments aligned, and they seemed instantly at ease with each other.

We walked together from the library to their nearby home—a tiny, one-room log cabin with a loft and the beginnings of a garden just starting to take root out front. They, too, had just moved to Pender.

The sun streamed through a dusty kitchen window, catching on jars of grains and dried herbs lining the open shelves. A tiered basket of fruit hung in the light. It felt earthy and alive—everything about their home spoke of intention and simplicity. Tyler, Gemma’s husband and Kali’s father, was in school to become an acupuncturist, and having spent years with natural health practitioners, I felt instantly at home in their rhythm. This was a “hippie” family, and I felt like I’d found my people.

I loved it. I loved their home. I loved that we were both new here. It felt like another quiet sign from the universe—one I clung to as these slow, sun-warmed days began to unfold.

Each day on the island, I could feel my breath come easier. I’d grown up in the city—I loved Seattle—but I didn’t know what I was missing until I got here. This was home.

The scent of pine. The chorus of birds. And the deer—always the deer—grazing in yards and along the roadside. I quickly learned that locals ignored them while tourists stopped to take pictures.

I vowed I would always stop. Even if I didn’t take a photo.

The first full weekend both Randy’s brother Rick, and separately our friends from co-housing arrived—on the noon boat. Sara and Ian and their two kids, both of whose births I had attended. Sidra thought of them as siblings. They had come to visit our new home.

We met them at The Driftwood Center—locally called The Drift—a small, L-shaped shopping plaza with a patch of grass in the middle, wedged between the parking lot and a row of shops. Randy had gone off to run errands with his brother, who was also visiting, so I stayed with our friends to show them around.

After picking up ingredients for the spaghetti dinner we’d planned for that night, we treated the kids to ice cream and sat at a picnic table in the grassy area. A few minutes later, Rick —Randy’s brother—joined us. And then I saw Randy walk by.

I waved.

He ignored me.

It wasn’t a big space. He had to have seen us. I called his name—louder this time—and again, he ignored me.

We all looked at each other, confused. Blank faces, raised eyebrows. What the hell?

I got up and jogged after him, trying to catch up. He kept walking—fast—staying a good ten paces ahead. I slowed, uncertain, and turned back, humiliated.

It was a sunny day. My daughter was giggling with her friends. My closest people were here. But a heavy, invisible weight pressed down on my chest. I felt exposed. Dismissed.

I tried to shake it off, told myself it was nothing. I forced a light tone and said, “I guess we’ll be meeting him back at Canal.”

Canal was a property Randy owned that he was planning to fix up as a vacation rental. It sat right on the water, thirty feet from a shell beach and water that as long as you didn’t dip your toe into it, you could believe was warm and tropical. The house itself was technically livable—except the deck was rotting, the roof needed replacing, the dock was unusable, and the interior needed a lot of work.

Still, Randy had plans. And on paper, they seemed sound.

The house we were actually living in—on Lighthouse Lane or “Lighthouse” as we referred to it—was barely a step above a worksite. Plywood floors, exposed drywall, no functional bathroom—just a toilet. We had to go downstairs to wash our hands and drive down to Canal to take showers. I was willing to accommodate - it was all part of the process and Lighthouse was an adorable little house, built to seem like a ship from the inside with large plank floors and tile window wells.

But that evening we were eating at Canal, because it was bigger and had more room.

I caught a quiet moment with Randy. I kept my tone light, curious.

“What happened earlier at The Drift?” I asked.

He turned so fast it startled me, and for the second time in a week, he grabbed my upper arm.

His face was inches from mine, voice low and tight, as he hissed through gritted teeth,
“Don’t you ever do that again!”

“Do what?” I asked, confused but calm. I truly had no idea what he meant. There was clearly a misunderstanding—something we could clear up in seconds. I gently twisted my arm out of his grasp. That kind of grip was unnecessary. Alarming.

“You know. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
His expression stayed hard. Unyielding.

My stomach fluttered. Sparks began to fire across my nervous system. My heart kicked up its pace. I could feel my eyes widen, my chin tilt forward in disbelief. No, I didn’t know.
What. The. Hell.

“Can you please explain what it is you think I did?” I asked carefully.

He finally answered, words clipped and sharp:
“You stood right in front of the real estate office where she works. You were rubbing it in her face. That’s cruel.”

And just like that, the nausea hit.

It all came rushing back.

Three months earlier, in early May, as flowers bloomed and the hush of evening settled over co-housing, I had just tucked Sidra into bed. I was quietly buzzing with anticipation—finalizing plans for my graduation in Santa Barbara next month, and for the trip of a lifetime: taking my daughter to Disneyland.

Randy called.

We usually talked on MSN Messenger, typing back and forth late into the night. But this time, the landline rang—sharp and loud on the wall above the kitchen counter. I rushed to answer it before it could wake Sidra.

His voice was steady, but something was off—measured, distant.
I need to tell you something, he said.

I hopped up onto the counter, legs dangling, heart starting to race. I waited.

Then, in a flat, practiced tone, he told me: he’d been in a relationship with another woman on the island. Not an affair, he clarified—he didn’t like that word. But it was something real, and he’d realized it needed to end.

He had expected me to hang up. To break up with him then and there.
I didn’t.

I was still convinced—desperately—that we were meant to be together. When he told me, it felt like a punch to the gut. I had never been betrayed like that before.

He was still living in Vancouver at the time. I told him he needed to come down. And he did.

While he traveled, I walked across the co-housing courtyard to Dianna’s house. She was calm, steady—grounding in the way I needed most. I cried. I raged. I said everything out loud, trying to make sense of it. She reminded me that I didn’t have to end the relationship just because he had been unfaithful. Maybe we could work through it. Maybe we could rebuild trust.

I loved him. Or—I loved the version of him I thought was real.

And underneath all that heartbreak, there was something else. A speck. A dust-mite-sized grain of truth I didn’t dare look at too directly:

I could not fail again.

Three years earlier, I had divorced a good man. A kind man. Because I grew apart from him. I was too young when I married him.
And now? I couldn’t be the woman who failed twice.

I’m the stable daughter.

That was always the story. My sister—who had made my life a waking nightmare through so much of our adolescence—was the one who spun out. I was the good one. The obedient one. The one our parents—our amazing, put-together parents—could count on.

And now here I was. One divorce behind me. Preparing to move to another country. To a man who had cheated—was cheating?—on me. Meanwhile, my sister—chaotic, defiant, reckless in her youth—had been with the same man for over a decade. They had three kids. A whole life.

It was all mixed up. None of it made sense.

When Randy arrived at almost midnight, I didn’t know if I was going to hug him tight or punch him in the stomach. I did neither. I kept my distance while he told me everything. One of the details—almost casual—was that the woman he’d been involved with was a realtor on the island. He said he still loved her. But he would choose me.

And I—gut-punched, disoriented—chose to forgive.

Now, standing there with his glare boring into me, the full weight of it came rushing back. A wash of understanding—and fury.

Apparently, she hadn’t taken the breakup well. She was in pain. And he wanted me to care about that.

I hadn’t been thinking about her. I hadn’t been thinking about anything but showing our friends around, eating ice cream on my first full day living on Pender Island. The idea that I had been deliberately standing in front of her office to send some kind of message was absurd.

And now, here he was—accusing me. Twisting my intentions. Making me the cruel one.

My thoughts spun too fast to catch.
Was I supposed to be thinking about her feelings?
Shouldn’t you care more about how it feels for me to be here, knowing she’s here on the island?
Why would you think I’d do that on purpose?

I landed on the only thing I could say that felt true. That felt like me.
“I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that.”

His reply was instant, flat.
“Of course that’s what you’d say.”

It didn’t make sense.
Yes, that’s what I’d say—because it was true.

But I couldn’t find the words to explain that. I was suddenly empty. Like my thoughts had scattered into the corners of the room. My brain grasped for something solid, something I could hold onto—some way to make sense of this—but I came up with nothing.

My eyes darted. My face went blank, mirroring the void inside me.

And then the quiet, dangerous work began—the rationalizing.

I had to find a way to fit his behavior into a story that made sense. A story I could live with.

Because if I didn’t—if I let the truth in too fast, too sharp—the shame would crack me open. It would eat me from the inside.

I saw two options.

I could leave. Admit I’d made a terrible, humiliating mistake. Turn tail and go back.
Or—I could rationalize it. Salvage it. Find a way to make it okay, to save face, to shut that door on the shame before it swallowed me whole.

The shame was too big. It hovered like a gray-black, ghostly shape—slimy and heavy, shifting at the edges of my vision. I couldn’t pin it down, couldn’t quite name it. It was everywhere and nowhere. It was everything.

I couldn’t make a mistake that big and still be okay.
It would ruin me.

I had sold my car. Left my job as a school counselor for an alternative education program for at-risk high schoolers. Let go of our co-housing home—Sidra’s dad had already moved back in.

There was nothing left for me in Seattle.

Sidra had said goodbye to her father, to her friends, to her school and her community.
And I had promised her this island. Promised her a life of peace, nature, safety from crime, no traffic, and one that I knew - or believed I knew - that she would love.

So I dug in.

I would make this work.
I would be the bigger person.

I reminded myself: Randy had a rough childhood. I didn’t. I was the lucky one.

And now I was a therapist. I had done so much of my own healing. I could hold space—for him, for us, for this.

I leaned hard into my spiritual beliefs, into the tidy formula I’d once trusted as the path to peace:

If I’m having an emotional reaction to someone’s behavior, it must be because something in me still needs healing. If I clear that wound, fully heal it, then nothing can hurt me. Nothing can shake me. Enlightened people are unbothered.

I told myself it had only been a few days. We were still transitioning. Still adjusting to this new life, this new rhythm.

It will get better.
I clung to that hope with a tenacity born of desperation. It had to get better.

I would give it time.

And besides…
We were living on an island.