By Bill Sargent

Bill Sargent Teaching Children “How Many Eyes Does a Horseshoe Crab Have?”

“We’ve been hearing a lot of the expression, “We’re all in the same boat.” And while it sounds good, is it really true?”

“My life hasn’t changed very much during isolation. I still write alone every day, seven days a week. I just don’t get paid for doing so.”

“Since I can’t operate a cash register and lack the training to be a first responder, I donate my scribblings to our local newspaper, which is a first-rate rag at that!”

“I’m fortunate to live in the town of Ipswich, which provides those of us over a certain age with a free shellfish license, so I haven’t had to go food shopping in almost two months. I get all my protein from mussels, oysters, crabs, and clams while I’m enjoying the eternal beauty of nature.”

“I’m grateful that Ipswich and the Trustees keep the best beach in Massachusetts open to residents during the weekends. It gives my life definition. I may have lost my income, but I’m not going to starve.”

“The rest of the week, the beach’s sole occupants are birds, beasts, and fish. They seem to like it that way.”

“I have lost a friend and a close colleague I was looking forward to working with, and I am fearful every time a member of my family has to go into the hospital for routine treatments.”

“I have had to postpone an operation to improve my vision for driving, but that doesn’t make much difference. I have nowhere to go.”

“Other people aren’t so fortunate. They are the real heroes. They risk their lives in hospitals cop cars, markets, and liquor stores. They wear masks all day and have to disinfect their hands after serving every customer. They come home with chapped faces and bruised raw hands. After their exhausting workdays, they have to come home and isolate to protect the lives of their children.”

“You can see it on the shell-shocked faces of women trying to balance work and home life and in the haunted eyes of newly unemployed men lacking the income, purpose, and camaraderie of their former jobs.”

“You see many of them walking sad and lonely along streets devoid of cars or trapped in tension-filled homes. Many have had to watch as loved ones died alone and afraid without the comfort of someone to hold their hands as they took their last rasping breath.”

“So, no. We are not all in the same boat. Some of us are fortunate. Others have lost the love of life itself. But we are all in this together, and we all need a helping hand, even if it has to be a virtual one. What a strange world we now live in.”

Featured image is from Ipswich Local News.  Clammer Russell Fowler, Jr. returns to shore with his haul. He says the clam flats in the Great Marsh are the best office he’s ever worked in. In Ipswich, a commercial clamming permit costs $450, which a good digger can reportedly earn back in a day (File photo, reused with permission, by Coco McCabe -The GroundTruth Project).