Falmouth Style

By James F. Murphy Jr.

The following article, written by my late father, was originally published in The Boston Globe Travel section on December 3, 1995.  

Much like Ishmael in “Moby-Dick,” I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is damp, drizzly November in my soul, I head for Ireland. 

Ireland? At this time of year?

Usually the cold blasts of winter nudge my Cape Cod neighbors south to Florida, but for the last several winters some mystical urge has sent me to the home of my ancestors: Dublin, Cork, Galway.

I have found Ireland in the dead of winter to have all the charm most lovers of Ireland revere for verdant hillsides, placid lakes, and singing pubs in the west of Ireland during July and August.

Ireland hops, skips, and dances in the “dead” months. The real Irish emerge, and the pace, certainly slower than most tourist spots by the very nature and culture of the places, slows to a crawl in winter. It is a time for “the chat.” Conversation, never rushed, becomes lyrical and poetic. There is time to appreciate the language and its flow, and the weather, contrary to popular opinion, is generally sweater-cool, comfortable, and soft. 

When a resident asks me if I am alone and I answer, “Yes,” I hear, “Ah, a shame. Two shorten the road.” 

Other expressions of rural and poetic philosophy not dependent on long, summer nights and golden days: “The beginning and end of one’s life is to draw closer to the fire”; “Praise the young and they will blossom”; “The well-fed does not understand the lean”; “The windy day is not for thatching”; “Put silk on a goat and it is still a goat”; and in the Gaelic, “Is ceirin do gach creacht an hoighne.”

“Patience is a poultice for all wounds.” 

In this casual season of the year, it is possible to strike up long conversations with priests, poets, politicians, farmers, barmen, children, and the elderly. Ireland is a nation of conversationalists. I have heard barmen, beer salesmen, dustmen, and carpenters give their critique of an Abbey play with the same erudition and feel for the theater that a professional critic might offer. 

Winter, too, is the best time to get to know, or at least observe, many of the colorful characters. And speaking of them, in recent years, Dublin has seen the passing of Christy Brown, “Bang, Bang” and “Johnny Forty Coats.” Christy is familiar from the film, “My Left Foot,” but the other two may not be easily recognizable. 

“Bang, Bang” is an avid devotee of the Old West, would ride the Dublin double-decker buses, point his two fingers at passersby and shout, “Bang, bang, gotcha.” Many gracious Dubliners (police included) would clutch at their hearts and “die” for old “Bang, Bang.”

“Johnny Forty Coats,” fearful of the demons of the past, draped, cloaked, and covered himself with as many layers of clothing as he could find to ward off the cold of his childhood as he lumbered and wrestled under his woolen burden along O’Connell Street – even on the warmest day in July. 

Brendan Behan, buried in historic Glasnevin Cemetery, his voice silent now but his prose forever riotous and bawdy, is almost lost in a grave surrounded by gnarled and hostile trees. With the help of my taxi driver and a Glasnevin gravedigger who quoted, narrated, and lectured on the works of dear Brendan, I found the playwright’s final resting place. I doubt I would have been given such special attention in the hurly-burly of the summer tourist season.  

The old characters are gone, but there will always be colorful characters in Dublin, and “Johnny One Drink” is one of them. Dressed meticulously, red boutonniere in his lapel, he walks ceremoniously into his favorite pub every Saturday at half-eleven (that’s 11:30), orders a large whiskey, adds five ounces of waters, sips, swallows off the remainder under the careful scrutiny of the rest of the bar crowd and nods his goodbye to the bar man.

“Where is he going now?” I ask.

“Shopping with the Mrs.” is the response. 

“Is that it? Will he have another drink?”

“No, that will be it,” says the longtime friend. “That will be it, until half-eleven next Saturday.” 

Others at the bar shake their heads.

“We could all do with a bit of discipline,” says one. 

“Aye,” the others join in. “We could that.” 

And there are other characters, but not all citizens of the Republic. A few weeks ago, I was walking across O’Connell Bridge with a professor friend from Dublin City University. Framed before me for all of Ireland to see was an apparition that seemed to appear from nowhere. 

There were two of them. They were in green. No, that is incorrect. They were green.  

From the green scally caps all the way down to bright, verdant running shoes, they competed most successfully with all the Jolly Green Giants of this world. 

I turned to my friend and said, “Peter, did you see that study in green?”

“Yanks with the wrong idea,” he replied. “The wearing of the green is inside, Jimmy. It’s not how you dress. It’s how you be.” 

But on to more practical aspects of Ireland in winter.

The Talbot Guest House on Talbot Street was about $45 for a single, $65 for a double, and $115 for a suite. All rates quoted are per room, not per person. The Talbot is less than 500 yards from the Abbey Theatre and one block from O’Connell Street. The Irish pound, or punt, was worth $1.61 US at this writing. 

Tickets to the Abbey are reasonably priced between $15 and $25 and never sold out in winter.

Prices all over the country drop dramatically in winter. When I took the train to Cork City, round trip was a little more than $35. 

Speaking of Cork, one of the unique experiences I had was my visit to the Cork City Gaol in Sunday’s Well. While visiting a jail may not appeal to most tourists, to an Irish-American it expresses that other aspect of our duality – melancholia. The prison housed “criminals” in the 19th century under deplorable and inhumane conditions. Many confined there had committed the heinous crime of stealing bread and a landlord’s potatoes to feed a starving family. 

The cells are furnished as they were in those oppressed years with lifelike characters and sound effects of clanking doors and hellish screams of pain, both emotional and physical. The effect is chilling. Guided tours are arranged upon request but, again, because of winter and a less hectic tourist season, I was able on my own to browse, to think, to reflect on man’s inhumanity to man. 

When I departed, I felt better for having visited and vicariously experienced the injustices of that 19th-century world. I was grateful, also, to my grandparents for braving stormy seas and settling in Boston. 

Admission prices to Cork Gaol are about $4.50 for adults, $2.50 for children, $3 for students, and $11 for a family ticket. 

Of all the winter values, the Blarney Park Hotel in the village of Blarney – and just a blown kiss to the Blarney Stone itself – is one of the great buys in Ireland. 

Midweek prices of about $60 for a room and full Irish breakfast and dinner, or three-night weekend stays for a little less than $100 – with saunas, heated pool, intimate pub, and quiet saloon with crackling fires. And the Blarney Woolen Mills is just a two-minute walk away. 

For more information, write to Gerry O’Conor c/o the Blarney Park Hotel, County Cork, Ireland; or phone 021-385281, telex 75022 or fax 021-381506. 

Ireland of the Welcomes awaits you all the seasons of the year, but becomes a little less lonely in the winter and would like to have a relaxed chat with her American friends. 

James F. Murphy Jr., a Falmouth novelist, is an associate professor at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and a visiting professor of writing and literature at Boston College. 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Daddy.

By Sarah E. Murphy

I stopped caring last year.

Not about life, or living. To the contrary.

I was reminded far too many times how fragile and fleeting this journey is. 

I stopped putting my priorities on the back burner in order to please. I stopped denying my dreams by thinking I’m not deserving. I stopped carrying the weight of worry – what other people think, or making the decisions that are best for me, or not being available at all times, and then obsessing that I’ve let someone down. 

I started listening to the inspiring voice in my head instead of the incessantly shaming critic.

Turning fifty was part of it. Rather than dreading that milestone, as I’m apparently supposed to, I welcomed it, embracing it with open arms.

Although our patriarchal, misogynistic society wants me to believe I’m officially ancient and irrelevant now, I’ve chosen to rebel by believing in my worth. I’ve always been a non-conformist. 

I have the nerve to think this is the best stage of my life, that I have important contributions to make, and that I’m just beginning to come into my power. 

Like so many women, self-judgement began in middle school. My opinion of myself became based solely on physical flaws I didn’t realize I had in elementary school, which were identified to me by boys. By fifth grade, I started hating any qualities that made me unique, particularly my pale skin and freckles. 

This was the 1980s, long before social media. The objectification of girls and women, and the emphasis on our appearance, is firmly embedded in our culture, emboldened today in a way that is unlike anything I had to endure in my youth. It has also been emboldened by religion and politics, which go hand in hand in America, despite our purported Separation of Church and State. 

On Instagram, we are flooded with videos about how to look younger, thinner, more voluptuous, more like celebrities who no longer resemble themselves from excessive plastic surgery. How to contour your nose to make it look smaller. How to make your lips look bigger and your legs longer. How to go gray “gracefully.”

Meanwhile, over on Twitter, sharing nude photos and video has become the primary barometer for female empowerment, with trending hashtags, such as #TittyTuesday. Unsurprisingly, the loudest voices of approval are from men, whose agenda is obvious. Cheering on females, some of whom are young enough to be their daughters or granddaughters. So predictable, so tedious.

I don’t have the time or emotional wherewithal for other platforms like TikTok, another forum that perpetuates this phenomenon.

I don’t take issue with what consenting adults choose to do with images of themselves, but I deeply resent the narrative this dangerous trend has created – that females who don’t post our bodies online are prudish, sexually repressed, ashamed of ourselves, and envious of those who do. It’s like something out of an After School Special, giving me flashbacks to high school, when I experienced more peer pressure from the fact I wasn’t sexually active than any exposure to alcohol or drugs. 

Empowerment to me is independence. It’s traveling around a foreign country, all by myself, without knowing a soul. It’s calling out the crimes of sex abuse in the Catholic Church with my writing, and fighting for reproductive justice by sharing my own abortion trauma, even when I feel like no one is paying attention. It’s being kind to myself in a world that benefits from women hating ourselves. But none of that is sexy to the masses.

Trying to promote my work on Twitter became a depressing exercise in futility. Needless to say, those of us who have been paying attention weren’t surprised when Roe was overturned. This culture contributed to it.

Today I took down the wall calendar of Italy that my husband Chris gave me for Christmas 2021. 

The last month of 2022 features the Rialto Bridge, one of the most iconic landmarks in Venice. From the time I was a little girl, even before middle school, when I started basing my worth on external measures, I knew one day I would visit the floating city I fell in love with the moment I saw it in a storybook. 

My childhood dream came true in 2022. After two years of Covid canceled trips, I found myself on my third solo trip to Italy, and my first time on an airplane since 2019. Chris gave me the calendar as motivation to make it a reality. 

I’ll never forget arriving in Venice from Lucca – the October sun shimmering on the Grand Canal, blinding me with surreal beauty. I couldn’t help thinking how happy my dad would be for me, and I started talking aloud to him, laughing at the reality I had actually made it, while crying tears of joy. 

Heading away from the crowd, I got on a water bus to check into my B&B, a loft in the 15th century palazzo of two artists. After a quick shower, I threw on a sundress and my Pumas and went out to explore my temporary neighborhood, exhilarated by the promise of not knowing or caring where I was headed. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Without the heavy burden of my suitcase, I felt completely free. 

I spent New Year’s Eve partaking in one of my favorite traditions, curled up on the couch watching The Twilight Zone. The older I get, and the more I commit myself to a life of creativity, the more I’m amazed by the talent and prescience of Rod Serling. “Number 12 Looks Just Like You,” based on “The Beautiful People” by Charles Beaumont, is set in the year 2000, a dystopian future in which everyone undergoes body and mind-altering surgery to become “beautiful.”

“Given the chance, what young girl wouldn’t happily exchange a plain face for a lovely one?” Serling asks in the introduction.

Eighteen-year-old Marilyn chooses not to undergo “the Transformation,” much to her mother’s dismay. She is confined to a hospital room against her will when her “radical” beliefs are uncovered, but in the end, she succumbs to the procedure. “I look just like you!” Marilyn gleefully exclaims to her best friend after looking in the mirror, for she has also lost the ability to think for herself. 

I couldn’t have picked a more fitting episode for a metaphor.

As I begin 2023, I’m strengthening my resolve to value myself and recognize my worth. After forty years of feeling inadequate, I’m comfortable in my own skin, and I’m proud of everything that makes me me. I’m no longer judging myself by society’s measures.

After decades of listening, I’ve tuned out the noise and turned up my own volume.  

By Sarah E. Murphy

It was September of 1990, my freshman year at Bridgewater State College. 

I was 18, and he had just turned 21. Although he was a junior, he was a year older than his BSC classmates, having graduated from New Bedford High School in ’87. He was also a commuter, who drove a hunter green MG, adding to his Jake Ryan/Sixteen Candles mystique.

I was introduced to Greg Motta, and many other people who would become my closest college friends, through my high school friend, Todd Humphrey, during lunch at the back tables in Tillinghast Hall. 

He was boyishly handsome without the slightest bit of arrogance. Our crowd had various nicknames, and he was dubbed “Groovy Greg,” for obvious reasons – he was effortlessly cool and unpretentious, with his own preppy/deadhead/surfer vibe. Fittingly, he also loved The Brady Bunch, one of many things we bonded over, and he was notably impressed whenever I’d stump him with trivia about my favorite, lesser-known episodes.

When I found out his birthday was August 7, my parents’ anniversary, I thought it was a sign we were meant to be together.

Greg was my first college crush, but an unrequited love. We were destined for something better than a fleeting romance.

Tilly became one of our places, where we’d sit for hours over endless cups of coffee. Or the Campus Center steps, or the Commuter Caf, or Carver’s Pond, or the corner of dorm room Scorpion Bowl parties. 

He was an Art major, I was an English major, and we had deep conversations about all things most important to us – family, music, creative expression. We didn’t do small talk. He listened intently and laughed loudly, his brown eyes twinkling, loving any anecdote about my upbringing, telling me all about his his parents, Anne and Frank, his two brothers, Chris and Andy, and his sister, also named Sarah. I had never even heard of Westport before I met Greg, and it seemed like such a faraway place. He loved his hometown the way I loved Falmouth.

Although I was only forty-five minutes from home, it was the first time I was away from my family, that pivotal chapter in life when we begin to identify as individuals and finally make our own acquaintance. I got to know myself while introducing myself to Greg, and during those talks, he made me feel smart and special, always identifying me as a writer, even when I didn’t feel like one. 

Greg was there for me in January of 1991, when my friend Jenny Chance was killed while riding her bike near her college campus in Vermont. She died doing something she loved. No warning. Three decades later, it still doesn’t seem real. Greg was the same age as Jenny at the time, and he wasn’t afraid of my tears and grief. He comforted me during a time of unfathomable pain. 

Two weeks ago, Greg died of a heart attack, after taking a run along Horseneck Beach, where he grew up, doing what he loved. Today, he should be turning 53. Instead, there is a staggering void in the world that can never be filled. 

The last time our college friends got together in August of 2014, Greg invited me to visit Westport the following month when the beaches would be less crowded in September. Then life happened. My father got sick and died the following year.

I never got a chance to visit Westport until last week, for Greg’s funeral. I finally met some of his family I had heard so much about in my youth – his brother, Chris and his dad – and his beloved fiancee, Icy, his partner in life and love for the past eight years. They all offered the most gracious and sincere condolences to me, a stranger, while in the midst of their own own unfathomable grief. I tried to keep my composure, but I can’t get used to speaking about Greg in the past tense.

When Mr. Motta told me he wanted to tell me a story about Greg, I could see some of where my friend had inherited his gregarious nature. His eyes lit up as he recalled a day at Little League tryouts when Greg was about ten. He had already made the team, but another boy, who wasn’t as athletic, was standing on the field alone. Greg went over and put his arm around him in a friendly gesture, making him feel welcome, accepted, comfortable, safe. “That’s just how Greg was. He got that from his mother,” he said.

If you were lucky enough to know Greg Motta, you know exactly how that little boy felt. 

By Sarah E. Murphy

June 27, 2022.

A cool and rainy grey day. Celtic vibes on Cape Cod. My dad’s favorite. 

The kind he’d spend writing in his upstairs office, the bedroom Courtney and I once shared when we were small, after moving full-time from Newton to our magical Falmouth summer home. The window overlooking the cherry tree we planted for Seton’s birthday when he turned 8.

It’s now a guest room for our expanding family, a neatly made bed with a stack of clean towels and a basket of toiletries for the outdoor shower. The shelf that once displayed awards, articles, and photographs of his life as a novelist, travel writer, theater director, high school teacher, and college professor, is now bare. The desk has been replaced with a bureau.

Today James F. Murphy Jr. would be 90 years old.

My father spent his last birthday in a nursing home bed, the beginning of the Endless Summer of 2015. He spent his last day on this earth three months later, also on the 27th, in a hospital bed in the Great Room of our Grand Ave home. 

The last time he celebrated at home, when everything was normal, with Paul’s Pizza in the kitchen, and  Mom’s Desert Rose China and cake and Brigham’s Ice Cream in the dining room, was 2014. One of my favorite photos of my dad and me is from that night. I’m wearing one of my Fleetwood Mac T-shirts and a deceptive smile hiding the fact I knew such times were fleeting. 

In addition to being a parent, my father was one of my closest friends. He always encouraged me to be an individual. To dress in my own unique style, to dye my hair whatever color I came across in Liggett’s as a teenager, to speak my mind and express my feelings, in poetry or in person, from voicing unrequited love to standing up to injustice. He was a mentor and a muse, a colleague and a kindred spirit. He opened up the world to me in countless ways, through literature and travel. 

I woke up today with the intention to feel nothing but gratitude for his life, and for the gift of being his daughter. But some days the climate in our country, which has become progressively darker over the past six years, rife with unabashed misogyny, is making it even harder to navigate life without him. I’m a daddy’s girl without a daddy, and I now feel like a fugitive in my own country. 

As I grieve the loss of Roe, I grieve not only the loss of my father, but in a broader sense, the loss of a man who empowered and respected women. Not just his beloved wife and four daughters, or the women to whom he had a personal connection, but his students, his colleagues, and anyone lucky enough to know him. My dad wasn’t threatened by women, he was inspired by them.

But despite all that, I never had the luxury of sharing my most painful and shameful secret with him. Because of my Catholic upbringing, a religion my family eventually questioned, and ultimately rejected, I was so programmed that I naively thought his love for me was conditional, as the Church always preached when it came to God and Jesus. I thought he wouldn’t love me the same, if at all, if he knew the “real” me, for I was the ultimate sinner. 

I’m now older and wiser, having recently celebrated a milestone birthday as well. The 23-year-old girl, who didn’t know where to turn when the home pregnancy test revealed what she already knew, is now 50. I now know that my father, who risked his life in the Korean War, would be outraged about the unconstitutional overturning of Roe, and the disgusting, ignorant attacks on women, and anyone, who has sought, or may someday need, an abortion. 

The void of his absence can sometimes be staggering. Today was one of those days. But I finally realize my father wouldn’t be ashamed of my journey, he’d be proud. In signature fashion, he’d be the loudest voice cheering me on. So as the rain pours down tonight, and the wind blows through my window, I try to tune out a white, female, conservative TV commentator defending rape and incest over reproductive freedom. 

Like a shell to my ear, if I close my eyes and listen closely, I can almost hear him telling me to never back down.

Happy Birthday, Daddy. I love you and miss you forever. 

By Sarah E. Murphy

It’s been just over a year since I stopped hiding. Since I said, and wrote, the words that have always been barely beneath the surface.

I had an abortion.

My decision to speak out right before the 2020 Presidential election was years in the making. Twenty-five, to be exact. A physical decision as much as an emotional one. My mind and body would no longer allow me to stay silent. And why should I?

When I published my essay on my blog, sharing what I had been too ashamed to tell the people closest to me, I braced for the public backlash. Or, more accurately, the whiplash, for I silently relive that experience every time I read a headline or social media post “debating” this fundamental human right.

There’s an expression that no one can make you feel anything without your permission, however I disagree. Although well-intentioned, it’s also  dismissive and invalidates the debilitating power of shame.

I knew I was probably making a big mistake when I also decided to post my story on one of our local Facebook discussion pages. My intent wasn’t to shock, seek attention, or push political beliefs. My hope was to illustrate that you never know what others are capable of hiding. That people are more than statistics.

As another expression goes, someone you love has had an abortion.

Regardless of your politics or religion, which often go hand in hand in the United States, someone in your life has been forced to make this painful decision. I assure you.

During my reporting career, I wrote about the life-saving work of the Samaritans on Cape Cod, which I shared widely on social media as a potential resource for individuals suffering from depression. But when I shared my own story on a public page, I was criticized and chastised by some who saw me as a modern day Hester Prynne, unworthy of any sympathy.

That’s because my trauma involves abortion. Or to borrow from Layne Staley’s Gibran inspired lyrics, my pain is self-chosen. At least in some people’s eyes.

Their reactions are the answer to the question I get all the time now.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

The predictable comments came in seconds after I posted the link containing the dreaded Scarlet “A,” so they hadn’t even read the article, they were merely triggered by the word.

The one I viewed as sinful and dirty. A word that had become a reflection of myself.

After all, it was my own fault, right? I was careless and stupid enough to get pregnant, so why shouldn’t I pay the price for the rest of my life? It didn’t matter that I was set up to fail by the Catholic Church, where I learned as a little girl that sex is a sin, unless it’s for procreation, and birth control is outlawed. Women were an afterthought. Madonna or whore. The Virgin Mary or Mary Magdalene. The mother of Jesus or his charity case, the prostitute.

But that was irrelevant. I never should have let it happen in the first place.

God punished you. You made your bed, so lie in it.

There was an angry-looking guy with an Irish last name. He was from Sandwich, not even Falmouth, but the “A” word got his attention. “Let’s see a sunset picture instead,” he wrote. “No one wants to hear about your past mistakes.”

Then a younger guy who looked to be in his 30s, who worked with a classmate at a local restaurant.

“That’s great but I don’t want to pay for it,” he chimed in, the one in the bar always trying to get a laugh.

Then a woman who affiliates herself with a popular Falmouth church that prides itself on being a “welcoming” environment.

“I didn’t join this page to hear about abortion,” she scolded.

When, against my better judgement, I decided to push back by informing her I merely thought my story might help someone else suffering from hidden trauma, she reiterated her point. In essence, the age-old dismissive shamer.

This isn’t the time or place.

So then, what is the time, and where is the place, to talk openly about mental health, depression, and suicide prevention? Major events, like an unplanned pregnancy, can forever change the trajectory of one’s life, but in particular, the person who becomes pregnant.

The connection between reproductive rights and mental health can’t be overstated, and it should no longer be ignored.

I’ve read, and shared, countless news stories on local Facebook pages, in addition to my own page, to help others  – Cape Codders struggling with financial challenges, health issues, alcoholism and substance abuse, just to name a few. Many of which I wrote as a reporter during my twelve-year career for Wicked Local. Part of my mission as a writer and storyteller is to show people  they’re not alone.

If I had given into my initial suicidal thoughts as a terrified young woman, before my two closest friends helped me access a safe and legal abortion, I wouldn’t have been here to tell those important stories, not to mention my work over the past three years advocating for sex abuse survivors.

Or if I had chosen to have a child with my partner, a heroin addict, I most likely would have ended up with the same habit, or dead as a result. I loved him more than I loved myself, and I would have done anything to make it work if a child were involved.

He inadvertently gave me one of the greatest gifts of my life when he chose heroin over me.

My abortion, and his rejection, gave me a second chance at life.

After all these years, I’ve never experienced a panic or anxiety attack, to my knowledge, but I became nauseous and lightheaded as my heart began echoing outside my chest.

I respect the admininstator of the Facebook page, who chose not to delete my post, but instead had the sensitivity to turn off the comments when similar criticisms came in and it became evident where the dialogue was headed.

But while the first inclination for some was to judge or berate, they were vastly outnumbered by those offering support and even admiration. Some even kindly said that by sharing my experience, I was possibly saving a life. That was exactly why I had posted it.

A few days later, on November 7, a Saturday, the election was finally called for Joe Biden. After living in what has become an unapologetically misogynistic society, I felt a wave of calm, poised for a sea change.

Later that afternoon, I headed to one of my sacred spots in Falmouth Heights to catch the sunset, for like Frank Lloyd Wright, nature is my religion.

I’ve witnessed countless jaw-dropping scenes in my hometown, but this one was special. Maybe because there was a collective serenity amid the small crowd waiting for the day’s curtain call. Salmon, lavender, and tangerine, no filter needed. “After the flood, all the colors came out.”

Each vivid shade offering the promise of change.

I then drove “around the hill,” as we always used to say in my family. Down past the ballpark and the Heights beach, Vineyard Sound hugging my right, heading to East Falmouth to pick up takeout at our favorite burrito place. Fading pastels danced in my rear view mirror as I crossed the Maravista bridge, and I was at peace.

The feeling was shattered shortly after I got home. As I glanced at my Facebook feed, a post by a friend jumped out at me, one word in particular.

I don’t know if he was drunk, or just pissed off about the election, or both, but he missed the irony by announcing, whether his words or a copied post, that his party would accept the results like adults without resorting to behavior such as labeling Biden supporters “babykillers,” or something to that effect. (His statement really didn’t age well considering the deadly insurrection that occurred eight weeks later.)

Just a few days prior, I had shared the most personal story I’ve ever written, in which I described the unfathomable cruelty of that word, one I had never seen him use until that moment. I always kept our political differences out of our interactions because I really liked him, which is why it was even more painful.

Thumbs up and heart emojis appeared instantly, along with enthusiastic words of approval from many familiar faces – people I’ve worked with in the community, siblings of friends, even one of my CCD teachers – but no surprise there.

That familiar tide of shame washed over me.

“Maybe he wasn’t talking specifically about you,” my husband, Chris, said gently, lifting me up off the kitchen floor where I was sobbing.

I practically screamed at him through my tears that every time someone uses that word, no matter who they are, they’re talking about me, or people just like me.

And every time I see or hear that word, I relive the most shameful experience of my life.

I never ended up eating that night.

I’m not looking for sympathy, or trying to shame others as I have been. I just want people to stop shaming us. To think before they judge.

Sticks and stones break bones, but words seep into marrow.

People can indeed make you feel without your allowance, but since speaking my truth and reclaiming my story, I’m healing and growing. I’m learning not to let their words define me.

Since sharing my story, or “coming out,” as a lesbian friend described, I’ve also experienced profound human kindness, often from the most unexpected places, particularly from strangers.

I’ve received countless messages from women who were compelled to share their experience with me, both publicly and privately, some who had never spoken or written the words. Many are still harboring this secret from their partners, spouses, and families. We are forever bound by trust, compassion, and respect.

Revisiting my past has not only been cathartic but also empowering. I got in my car on April 26, an unseasonably balmy day last spring, and drove to Planned Parenthood in Providence. I practically crawled in on that day in 1995, blinded by sunlight, reeling from morning sickness, shame, and guilt. Twenty-six years later, walking into the prison-like facade, enclosed by a fence for safety, I was overcome with gratitude.

As a now 49-year old woman, I felt proud of the writing career I’ve built, which has brought me from Falmouth to the Vatican, and the people I’ve helped with my words.

Others throw around the the self-righteous term “pro-life,” implying the rest of us are “pro-death.” Grafifti was scribbled on a sign outside as a reminder.

“Please don’t kill me, Mommy.” In actuality, it’s impossible to calculate how many lives Planned Parenthood has saved. I’m just one.

I’ve also found a community of support at Recovery Without Walls, where I was invited last spring by my friend, Bill Dougherty, to participate in a weekly acupuncture and meditation group with women in recovery. Acupuncturist Arlene Myers Alexander, a new and cherished friend, incorporates cellular healing meditation as a tool to help manage the amygdala, the part of the brain that controls our fight or flight response with emotions such as shame, fear, anxiety, and depression.

There I’ve forged profound connections with inspiring women, all recovering from something. They make feel pride instead of shame. There I’m not afraid to be myself. It’s a place where I’m safe to be vulnerable.

I’ve also been touched by the vocal support and validation from the men in my life, old friends and new, publicly and privately. It’s hard to convey what it means, for, in my experience, men are the loudest voices controlling this narrative, lawmakers aside.

But as I’ve learned from my dear friend Steve Bird, a sex abuse survivor and advocate I’ve worked with for the past three years, no one’s trauma is any less valid. That includes mine.

This past October, my mother and I stood out once again in front of Peg Noonan Park in Falmouth for reproductive rights, but that morning I also joined a group at the Mashpee rotary. This time was different from 2020, when I stood alongside others in Falmouth Village. This time, my sign said it all.

My abortion saved my life.

Any qualms I had about those unequivocal words were put to rest when I met Ann Shea of the Upper Cape Women’s Coalition, who embraced me and asked to take my photo. She and Penelope Duby of UCWC have become part of my new support system, while also inspiring me.

I was then approached by a man who appeared to be in his 80s, who squinted his eyes to read my sign.

I tensed up for a second, until he lifted his cane and bowed his head in a gesture of respect.

“I admire you. You are very brave,” he said.

My eyes filled with tears, thinking he was about the same age as my father would be. One of my closest friends, he never knew my hidden pain. I almost told him once but I was too ashamed. Afraid it would change the way he viewed me. I knew deep, deep down, then and now, that wasn’t the case, that he would still love me unconditionally, but shame is overpowering and undermining.

I recently watched the Netflix miniseries, MAID, based on the 2019 memoir by Stephanie Land. I could relate so well to the main character, and I got a glimpse of what my future might have been. Alex is in her mid twenties, a single mother of a toddler, and an aspiring writer. Her college plans, and a creative writing scholarship, are put aside as she attempts to leave an abusive relationship while navigating government assistance and cleaning houses.

Making enough money to survive while not making too much to render her ineligible for assistance is a full-time job. One of the most important topics the series addresses is emotional abuse, and how it is just as debilitating as physical violence. The fact that the father of her child didn’t hit her proves to be a strike against her, for although the American social justice system views emotional abuse (and financial abuse) as a form of domestic violence, the legal system doesn’t.

Words and fists are both used to oppress, which the show powerfully illustrates. I know what it’s like to lose all belief in yourself only to believe a false narrative created by a gaslighter. Sometimes I still hear his voice in my head: “Crazy. Psycho. Paranoid.”

Additionally, it shows that poverty, generational trauma, untreated mental illness and substance abuse are all part of the same vicious cycle.

Margaret Qualley and her real life mother, Andie MacDowell, both give stunning performances. I cried long buried tears for Alex, and I wanted to reach through the screen and hug her tightly, telling her she’s smart, worthy, and capable of so many things.

The holidays can be bittersweet. If I had decided to become a mother, I would have given birth on or around Christmas. I’ve always found New Year’s Eve to be melancholic and anti-climactic, like life itself. Too much pressure for perfection.

This year I was lucky enough to spend Christmas Eve with Kelly, who, along with Damian, saved my life by simply being there, without judgement.

Some of my happiest Christmas memories involve both of them, including the night I had too many cocktails before Midnight Mass and inadvertently started saying Mass along with the priest. Memories made between Sunset Strip in Mashpee and Worcester Court in Falmouth Heights.

Parenthood wasn’t my journey, but it ended up being theirs, and watching them both perform that role fills me with emotion. They and their spouses have created beautiful families that give me hope for our future.

Instead of pondering the past on New Year’s Eve, Chris and I celebrated what’s to come, watching the sky over MacMillan Pier in Provincetown ablaze with fireworks. A Cape Cod community where freedom of identity is not only accepted, it’s expected.

I’m excited for the future, both personally and professionally. I’ve learned so much about myself since honoring my past. I now know that I’m not any less a woman because I didn’t have children. I’m not a failure, or a sinner. I’m not a criminal.

Most importantly, I’ve discovered I’m not alone.

Text and Photos by Sarah E. Murphy

While Stephen Bird was busy last week preparing his signature soup and clam chowder for the Cape Cod Marathon, he had no idea how much those efforts would be appreciated, not just by the running community, but the town of Falmouth in general.

After a one-year hiatus in 2020 due to Covid-19, this year’s staging of the Mayflower Wind Cape Cod Marathon, Relay, and Half was highly anticipated, by runners and organizers. Slated for Halloween weekend, the event notoriously coincides with the region’s stormy autumn weather, so while a late October Nor’easter was not necessarily unexpected, it was definitely unwelcome. Cape Cod awoke to widespread power outages and extensive storm damage in the early morning hours of Wednesday, October 27, and the following day, the race committee was forced to make the difficult decision to cancel.

The next item on the agenda: deciding what to do with 200 gallons of soup and chowder.

As production chef for The Quarterdeck and the Pilot House in Falmouth and Sandwich respectively, Steve Bird is well-known for his clam chowder and hearty soups, which he has prepared for the past few years for the post-race celebration. The event is often held under a tent in a torrential downpour, so the menu is by design.

“Providing a hot, nutritious meal to runners after they cross the finish line is one of the things the Cape Cod Marathon is known for, and it’s a tradition not all races do anymore,” Steve said. “It’s something people appreciate, especially when it’s freezing cold and raining during race weekend.”

Therefore, as the forecast started to turn bleak for October 30 and 31, Steve forged ahead undeterred, prepping the base for the coveted chowder, in addition to turkey and wild rice soup, and gluten-free minestrone, for those with dietary restrictions. 

Although power would eventually be restored for much of Falmouth by race day, the storm’s impact proved to be too much, particularly in terms of flooding and downed trees and power lines along the course. The Falmouth Running Club, which produces the event, met with Falmouth Police Department on Thursday morning and, shortly after, race director Jack Afarian made the call to cancel.  

“My first priority is the safety of the runners, volunteers, and spectators, and if I don’t feel like I can conduct a safe race, we’re not going to do it. And the police agreed,” he said. “We put our heads together and decided to give the soup away, and then we talked about the best way to do that.”

After race organizers weighed Gus Canty Community Center as an option, they contacted Falmouth Recreation Director Joe Olenick, who gave them permission to set up on the sidewalk in front of the building, centrally located on Main Street, next to Falmouth Police Department and Falmouth Senior Center.

At the suggestion of Falmouth resident Art Gaylord, Steve Bird contacted his neighbor and family friend, Samantha Bauer, founder and director of Falmouth nonprofit Inspiration is Everywhere, who was already doing her part. Once she determined Kenyon’s Market in East Falmouth was already distributing free coffee for line workers, she began requesting donations through PayPal and Venmo for Gatorade and electrolyte waters, which she delivered to the EverSource staging area in front of Wal-Mart. Shaw’s Supermarket also donated to her effort. After reading a Facebook post by the wife of a line worker who couldn’t obtain bottled water while out on his route, she purchased reusable travel mugs at Dollar Tree, which she filled with water supplied by Cape Cod Marathon, and also delivered.

Social media blasts were shared on Thursday to announce the makeshift soup kitchen at Gus Canty, informing people to come equipped with their own containers with lids, and Steve Bird, with help from his wife, Jennifer Gilbert, and other volunteers, began transporting his equipment, along with countless buckets of soup and chowder base. 

Cars began filling the parking lot shortly after their start time of 3 pm, with volunteers from Falmouth Running Club, Falmouth Road Race, Inspiration is Everywhere, and title sponsor Mayflower Wind serving up Steve’s creations, along with apples, bananas, and snacks, donated for runners by Shaw’s, in addition to gallons of drinking water. Hot breakfast sandwiches were sent over by the Falmouth Inn, located next to Gus Canty.

The Marathon soup kitchen set up in the same spot again on Friday, when many people were gratefully returning home to restored power, after about 56 hours without.

Food sponsor donations included ingredients for the chowder and soups from Reinhart Foodservice; Ring Brothers Produce; dairy from Paul W. Marks; turkeys from William and Company; and clams from St. Ours.

For Jack Afarian, it was a positive outcome to an unfortunate situation. 

“It feels pretty lousy to disappoint 4,000 runners, but that’s the second worst thing that can happen to a race director. The worst is to have an unsafe event where someone is injured, or worse,” he said. “We’re putting everything toward a good cause, so there’s a silver lining here. Maybe there was a reason the race was canceled.”

Filling in gaps of need in the community is the core mission of Inspiration is Everywhere, from providing essentials like clothing and toiletries to aiding individuals by connecting them to resources, to providing general assistance, such as free internet access. The office on Spring Bars Road boasts a meeting space available for hosting alcohol and drug-free events, in an effort to combat substance use disorder among young people as a result of boredom and experimentation.

Samantha Bauer eagerly answered Steve’s call seeking help with the townwide effort at Gus Canty.

“I’m happy for any chance to show my community that other people care about them, whether they’re in a state of crisis or not,” she said.

Giving back to those less fortunate was instilled in Samantha by her mother and grandmother, and it’s a lesson she models to her children, Anthony and Isabella, 4 and 5, who were passing out fruit.

“It’s important for my kids to be involved and see they can physically impact people in a positive way, by simply handing someone a banana or a cup of soup,” Samantha said.

She and Steve Bird hope to move forward with a more organized effort for future storms, in which restaurants can participate by donating their food during power outages for Steve to prepare for the public. Samantha has drafted a proposal for the consideration of town officials.

Steve and I had spoken by phone earlier in the week about a very different topic; he took a break from prepping and chopping as the rain pelted down on Cape Cod. I had recently written for my blog his courageous account of surviving childhood sexual abuse, which he confided to me in 2018 but only recently decided to share with the public. One of his goals for telling his story is to underscore the connection between addiction and unresolved trauma, with the hope of showing survivors they’re not alone. After 15 years of attempting to get sober, Steve celebrated his first year free of alcohol, nicotine and drugs back in August, and he believes that finally acknowledging his trauma has been essential to his recovery.

We’ve since shared Steve’s story with local media and beyond, and will continue to do so, in an effort to spread his message far and wide. Since coming forward, Steve has been approached by countless people, acquaintances and strangers, who can relate to his pain, and realize they don’t have to suffer in shameful silence.

Watching his hometown line up for a bowl of hot, homemade soup after two days without power, which he prepared, proved to be a similar reminder.

“No matter how connected we think we are, or how many Facebook friends we have, so many people are lonely and isolated,” he said. “This was a way to keep the Marathon tradition alive while bringing our whole town together.”

By Sarah E. Murphy

I recently stumbled on the following essay I wrote a few weeks into my first semester at Bridgewater State College (now University), in the Fall of 1990, for one of Professor Maureen Connolly’s writing classes. I don’t remember the exact assignment, but it details the day my parents drove me to BSC. My dad was soon leaving to teach for the semester at Dublin City University on a Jasper Whiting Scholarship, and I was full of mixed emotions. Although I got an A-/B+, I see some grammar issues and other things I should have changed, but I left it untouched, in the voice of my 18-year-old self, for it brings me right back to that day. There are also unanswered questions – like how did I shower on my first day of class? And how did my poor dad find the time to come back the next day? 

When I think of the thousands of selfless things my parents did for me over the years, this was just another day in the life. Long before cell phones, or even luggage on wheels. Crossing the Bourne Bridge on Labor Day.

September is bittersweet. 

I woke up on Monday, September 3, after a restless night, knowing something about the day was different. My eyes focused on my barren walls, once covered with posters that were now neatly rolled, tied, and packed away. Then it dawned on me – it was my first day of college. 

I showered thinking, “This is the last time I’ll be showering in a ‘normal’ bathroom.” While I was working up a good lather on the top of my head, I contemplated the many bags and suitcases waiting in my room. Packing had always been something I just couldn’t grasp. I remember a trip to Canada years ago when I had packed about 18 pairs of shorts and not a single pair of pants. Upon arrival, we were greeted by the coldest summer Prince Edward Island had seen in years. My family drove for miles in our Brady Bunch station wagon, searching for a children’s clothing store. Thankfully, we finally found a thrift shop. 

Packing for college was no different. For some reason, I felt insecure about leaving my winter sweaters in my back closet unguarded, so I had packed bags upon bags of wool and cashmere. Dad’s face became more contorted with each bag I lugged out to him. Somehow he managed to pile it all in the trunk. Mom had been warning me about “overpacking,” referring to “Nina bringing winter boots to Chestnut Hill in September.”

However, I thought I had everything under control. So I said my goodbyes to my brothers and sisters, posed for a few forced smile snapshots, and with Oscar-worthy melodrama, embraced my beloved Great Dane, Sinead. Even though Bridgewater was under an hour away, I felt as if I were seeing them all for the last time. 

After what seemed like ten minutes on the highway, we pulled into the parking lot of Shea-Durgin aka “The Hill,” which was to be my home for the next eight months. My parents and I unloaded the car and carried everything up to Room 213 Shea. My roommate, her parents, and brother, and boyfriend were just about finished getting her settled, and after introductions, they went off to get lunch.

The three of us proceeded to unpack my things and make up my bed. The first hurdle I had to overcome was when my mom held up one of the packages I had searched high and low for (extra-long twin is rather hard to find in Falmouth), informing me I had purchased two fitted sheets. She assured me it was a simple mistake, but I chided myself for making such a faux pas after two years as a chambermaid. 

While I was busy arranging my jewelry on the dresser, I heard my mother exclaiming – half to herself, half to me – “Goodness, when do you find the time to listen to all of these tapes?!” Annoyed, I just shuffled earrings louder.

My dad then asked where my towels were so he could put them on the high shelf in my closet. Thus began the fruitless search. Ten minutes of, “I could have sworn,” and rifling through plastic bags. My parents found the whole situation quite humorous, saying I could use one of my wool sweaters as a towel. I, on the other hand, found nothing funny about it. I became more enraged as I noticed my roommate’s four fresh, clean towels stacked perfectly on her shelf. I fumed silently, trying to concentrate on happy things: Christmas vacation, spring break, summer!

After a lot of slamming of books and pouting, I decided to grow up, and realize things could be much worse. My parents once again reminded me I was 45-minutes away, and my dad could come back the next day with the forgotten items, like a wastebasket and more hangers. So after I closed the door behind my parents, and perhaps my childhood, I looked around my new room and decided where to hang my posters.

Poetry and photos by Sarah E. Murphy

I used to drive by religiously

to make sure it was still there. 

Every time I rounded the Heights Hill

I held my breath

wondering what would greet me at the top

knowing any day it could all change.

And each time I saw the vista of my youth

familiar relief washed over me

like the feeling of the surrounding waves

or the season’s first swim.

Everything was as it should be

when I spotted the barn-like structure

and the seaside deck overlooking Vineyard Sound.

The green and white awning

and the weathered boardwalk we strolled 

with our Great Danes

Ophelia, Sinead, and finally Max.

“Shall we go around the Hill?” Mom would ask

on the way home from St. Patrick’s on Sundays.

A suggestion more than a question 

for the answer was always yes.

Dad would bear right at the island 

past Holiday Cycles and the Chapel

heading left at the Yacht Club. 

But on Thanksgiving

I walked into the kitchen to hear Mom on the phone

updating my uncle on local news.

“Well, the Casino’s gone,” she said. 

“It took a few days to come down.” 

And as her words settled in the air like dust

panic and grief washed over me

as I realized in the holiday rush

I hadn’t gone around the Hill that day.

Checking on the turkey

I saw flashes of summer nights with my siblings

and twilight treks across the ballpark 

for soft serve and penny candy

which later became midnight cocktails.

It was like learning of a friend’s death 

after the funeral had already passed.

Before dinner, Seton and I went for a drive.

“Are you ready?” he asked starting the car.

I hesitated,

for like any other loss

the child in me thought 

that if we didn’t go around the Hill

it wouldn’t really be gone.

Maybe for now we could just pretend.

But I had to see it

to make myself believe it

and as we drove

I remembered the night

I looked through the crowd 

to see my underaged brother

walking across the beach

grinning sheepishly

casually joining us 

on the overcrowded deck.

The older sister in me knew

I should have sent him home

but somehow I didn’t have the heart.

Or dancing with Andrea on Road Race 

to The Gap Band

or with Courtney to Third Eye Blind.

Flashes of countless nights 

once commonplace.

The sun shone disrespectfully 

as we tried to pay our respects.

Neither of us spoke

and as we rounded the Hill

there was nothing to greet us

but a pile of rubble

and a chain link fence.

Monday on my way back to Newton

I returned with my camera

knowing I would regret it if I did

and even more if I didn’t. 

No seagulls soaring for scraps 

where Scoops and Ladders once stood.

Instead a greedy steel bird  

scooping up pieces 

of what was once the Casino.

By Sarah E. Murphy

School night snowstorms 

were the highlight of those long, dark winters.

Dad was a misguided meteorologist 

with only the best intentions.

When he professed

“there’ll be no school tomorrow!” 

with cheerful certainty 

we could plan 

on the screech and halt 

of the bus flying down Grand Ave

so we learned early on to be hopeful

when he was doubtful.

I’d peer outside my window 

my nose freezing against the icy glass

staring at the sky for signs

listening for a message in the wind.

Ted would call his friend John,

the superintendent’s son

in an effort to obtain 

classified information.

In the early hours

after restless sleep 

I’d resume my post 

trying not to wake Courtney

to see a torrent of white 

falling under the streetlight 

by the O’Connors’ house 

and into the inky black ocean 

of the Heights.

We didn’t really know

there was magic 

in those moments 

when all was silent but for the hiss 

of snowflakes making contact. 

Later that morning

after the donning of many layers 

we sought satisfaction 

in leaving the first footprints 

at the ballpark

drifts crunching under our feet

as we staggered to meet the McEvoy girls 

barely recognizable 

in their parkas and moon boots. 

At day’s end 

mittens and snow pants 

would swim in puddles by the coal stove 

while we savored our Swiss Miss

celebrating simple joys. 

Sarah E. Murphy/Copyright 2010

By James F. Murphy Jr. (1932-2015)

Intro by Sarah E. Murphy

Write what you know. It’s what my father always told his students, but I always reiterated to him, for I believe his best writing is autobiographical. His words had an elegant cadence, full of rich description and poetic alliteration, no matter the subject. He wrote the following essay in the summer of 2008, after watching Barack Obama address a diverse and jubilant crowd in St. Paul, Minnesota, when he became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party, and the first African-American to do so.

My father was overcome with emotion, for many reasons, and penned the following reflection, which I typed for him and submitted to the Cape Cod Times for consideration; it was published later that summer.

My father is pictured first from the left in the top row, at age 20, at basic training. He didn’t meet his friend, Nickie, whom he honors in this essay, until he was in Korea, and he never forgot him. Over the years, my dad and I tried to find Nickie, but we didn’t have much to go on. I searched the web and followed-up on a few leads, with no luck.

There are so many times I’ve pondered my dad’s words – while watching Colin Kaepernick kneel in peaceful protest, while holding a sign and waving to my fellow Cape Codders to respectfully demand racial justice, or while watching Spike Lee’s fictional account of the very real experience of the African-American soldier in his riveting film, “Da 5 Bloods.”

This morning, I thought of my father and Mr. Nickie, and how grateful they would be to see their sacrifices being respectfully honored by President-Elect Joseph Biden and his wife, First Lady-Elect Dr. Jill Biden at Philadelphia’s Korean War Memorial. And how jubilant they would be to see the United States has finally joined the more evolved and sophisticated countries around the globe by finally sending a woman to the White House – one of Jamaican and Indian descent.

On this Veterans Day, I send my deepest gratitude to all who have fought for our freedom, but especially the heroes who have been forgotten, overlooked, and taken for granted because of their skin color.

This is for you…

A Sort of Homecoming: Unsung Heroes of the Forgotten War

By James Francis Murphy Jr.

Recently, as I watched Barack Obama speaking to an audience of people from all walks of life, my thoughts traveled back over 50 years to a troop train and a five-day trip from Fort Lawton, Washington to New York City.

We soldiers on board were returning from service in Korea and we settled in comfortably, “compliments” of the United States Government. My friend, Nickie, an African-American, referred to as a “Negro” in those days, took the top bunk and I took the lower.

“I like it up here, Jimbo. I feel like Jimmy Cagney in White Heat. ‘Top of the world!’” he said, followed by a pretty good Cagney impersonation.

I responded with my best Walter Brennan, and we began five days of laughing and sharing our impersonations of movie stars.

We had met in a field hospital, where Nickie was receiving treatment for wounds he had suffered earlier when on night patrol and, I, less dramatically, was there recuperating from a bout with malaria.

We hit it off immediately, but after our release from the hospital, we lost touch with one another until we met at a staging area in Fort Lawton, just a few days before we embarked on the journey home. Despite the passing of time, we picked up where we had left off.

Once on board, Fred, the African-American porter, took good care of us, along with the eight other soldiers in his assigned station. As he sat on the edge of my bunk, Fred regaled us with stories of his years as a Pullman porter, while Nickie listened intently from his perch above.

Fred mentioned a name I have never forgotten, Mr. A. Phillip Randolph. “Yes, sir. He is my hero, and a hero of all the Georges.” Fred nodded.

“Georges?” I asked.

He smiled. “All the porters are called “Georges” because of George Pullman, the founder and owner of the Pullman Company. And Mr. Randolph is our hero because he fought to unionize us. He certainly improved our lives.”

“Should we call you George?” Nickie laughed.

“No, call me Mr. Fred and I’ll call you Mr. Nickie and Mr. Jim. Is that okay with you?”

Throughout the following days, Nickie and I caught up on our meeting in the hospital, and the laughs we had shared. We would stand out on the iron platform between the two cars and swap stories of sergeants we knew and loved and, well, the others.

As we talked, the lurching train twisted through the narrow corridors of the Dakotas, past valleys and lofty mountains, brushed alongside the green rows of Wisconsin farms that stretched for acres, and on toward the cattle of Nebraska that grazed in the sweet sweep of grassland.

“Boy, it really is a big country, Nickie,” I marveled.

“Sure is,” he sighed. “Sure is.”

One night, as we stood on the platform, with the scent of apple and berry orchards and the pinch of pine in the air, Nickie seemed alone in his thoughts, even though I was at arm’s length. For some reason, I was mature enough to linger quietly as the clattering and rattling of the tracks below seemed to accentuate what was unsaid but palpable.

Finally, he turned to me. “You know, Jimbo, I don’t think I’ll ever play baseball again. I was a damn good pitcher. But, that shrapnel tore a lot from that shoulder. I’ll miss baseball. But, I suppose a guy can’t play a game for the rest of his life,” he joked.

“Nickie, I read somewhere they can do wonders these days with wounds and injuries,” I pronounced with the naïve confidence of a 21-year-old.

“Yeah, we’ll see. Hey, maybe I’ll come visit you and we can go see Ted Williams and the Red Sox.”

The stories of the war, baseball, girlfriends, and movies passed too quickly as we raced East and then quite suddenly, we were pulling into New York and Penn Station on the morning of August 10th. We looked out the windows of our bunks, and instead of the vast prairies we had left behind, we craned our necks at the towering buildings of Manhattan.

“It’s over, Nickie,” I yelled up to him. “We’re in New York City.”

“Yeah, we are. It’s been a great ride, Jimbo.”

Later, as I stood in front of a full-length mirror in an antechamber outside the men’s room combing my hair, Mr. Fred stepped in.

“Well, now, look at Mr. Jim getting all gussied up to meet the ladies.” And then suddenly, his tone became serious. “I wouldn’t go into the men’s room if I were you, Mr. Jim,” he warned.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because Mr. Nickie is in there.”

“I don’t get it. What difference does that make?”

“He’s crying.”

“He’s crying? Why is he crying? We’re going home.”

“Where do you live, Mr. Jim?”

“You know where I live. Outside of Boston.”

“Mr. Nickie lives in Mississippi.” He shook his head and left.

In the excitement that poured out of us like a river, we grabbed our bags and headed for the buses to take us to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey to be discharged from the Army. I never saw Nickie again and I didn’t even have his address.

So the other evening as I watched Barack Obama, a five-day journey that took place over half a century ago came flashing back, almost as if it were yesterday, and I thought of my friend.

I found it difficult to keep the tears back as Barack Obama, the first African-American presidential nominee, spoke before a stadium of supporters. I hoped that somewhere, Nickie was watching, his eyes moist and hopeful, and I thought, ‘Top of the world, dear friend. You have finally come home.’

By Sarah E. Murphy

In 2020 America, we’re celebrating a century of women’s suffrage while simultaneously defending a woman’s right to govern her body. The Margaret Atwood allusions became tired long ago. Throughout this election cycle, women and their families have also been forced to defend the most difficult medical and emotional decision imaginable – late-term abortion. 

Over the past four years, a woman’s private pain has increasingly become water cooler fodder, dinner table conversation. Something to “discuss” on Facebook, or the comment section of the local newspaper.  Since everyone else is talking about it, particularly white mansplainers on social media, I need to join the conversation, despite my instinct to hide. I’m tired of being ashamed.

This is my story. 

I was 23, and newly in love. It was my last semester at Bridgewater State College, and I couldn’t wait to graduate. I almost didn’t. 

Earlier that winter, I went from one dysfunctional relationship to another, after a year of trying to deny the feelings that had been building for a friend. He was like the Pied Piper, seeming to come out of nowhere. He showed up on campus one day the previous year, acoustic guitar in hand, his boyish charm and quick wit initially masking his childhood trauma. John Lennon meets Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of the band everyone was talking about. A meeting of the minds of his two musical inspirations. 

I can’t help but feel that I deserved it all, since Griffin and I got together in such a selfish way. I don’t regret the fact I finally found the self-esteem to walk away from a boyfriend who spent the majority of our two-year relationship cheating on me (often with my friends, or people in our social circle), but I wish I hadn’t been so myopic, disregarding the feelings of Griffin’s girlfriend, someone I respected and admired. She too had fallen for Griffin’s spell, while in a relationship with one of my closest friends. When Griffin and I betrayed them to be in a relationship, we were ostracized by all our mutual friends, which I now understand, but at the time I thought it was hypocritical, since everyone had seen firsthand how I had been treated. It was the cliched messy love triangle that often occurs in the microcosm of a college clique, but with so many more sides.

I don’t remember the exact sequence of things, for I’ve blocked a lot of it out. Since working with victims of clergy sex abuse over the past two years, I’ve come to understand so well the concept of compartmentalization. You pack away the things that are too painful to protect yourself in an attempt to move on. I vaguely recall walking to CVS, and then going back to my rented room in a home near the campus center.

The test told me what I already knew.

I was pregnant.

Despite my love of the ocean, and my Pisces horoscope, I’ve always been terrified of deep and dark water, even on television. My father had a profound fear of drowning throughout his life that he inadvertently passed on to me. He was always nervous about his children at pools or on boats, immediately searching for a life preserver. The idea of getting caught in a riptide is more terrifying to me than almost anything imaginable. Perhaps because I’ve known a similar helplessness.

Unless you’ve been raised in the Catholic faith, it’s impossible to understand the tidal wave of shame that suffocated me in that moment.

I was the quintessential “middle child” of six. I always followed the rules and tried to never make waves. From a very young age, I took on my mother’s insecurities around money, and not having enough of it. She did the bills in our house, so she was more realistic than my dad. She had given up her master’s degree, her teaching career, and her aspirations to be a mother and teach CCD, because that’s what was expected of Catholic women. My mom and I have lived parallel lives, for she didn’t have a choice either. I often felt guilty for my very existence, and I was envious of my older siblings, for it seemed like life was a little simpler when it was just the three of them with Mom and Dad, when they lived in Newton.

I never advocated for myself about anything; Bridgewater was the only school I applied to. My dad had a friend in the English department, but more importantly to me, I could go there tuition-free because my father taught at Mass Maritime Academy. I didn’t want to go to a Jesuit school like Boston College, because of my experience in the Catholic Church, so instead of following in my father’s footsteps, I chose a state school for one main reason: it was cheaper.

I later worked at Northeastern University and fell in love with everything about the school, wondering how things might have been different if I hadn’t gone to Bridgewater, and if I hadn’t met Griffin. Would I be more “successful” now, with a “normal” life? Probably not, for the problem was primarily with me. I would have been just as co-dependent no matter where I ended up, and if I went to a bigger school, I might have gotten lost in other ways, missing out on all the memorable things from Bridgewater, when I was single and somewhat confident, before I got into relationships and forfeited my self-esteem. I wouldn’t have met my original circle of friends, or had my radio show, or written poetry for the school literary magazine. Things that allowed me to express and be myself.

I don’t know whom I was more afraid and ashamed to tell – my father, my mother, or my older sister. When you come from a big family, each sibling has a role, and it wasn’t my sister’s fault I feared her, but she was just as much of an authority figure as my parents, perhaps more.

The life I had imagined for myself, and taken for granted, was suddenly over. I was no longer the person anyone thought or hoped. I was a stranger even to myself, and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t turn to the people I had always counted on.

The misogyny of our patriarchal and chauvinistic society rears its ugly head in so many aspects of a woman’s life, but especially if you’re Catholic. Therefore, I missed out on healthy rites of passage, like dating. When I was in ninth grade, and the boy from church I had a crush on suddenly started paying attention to me, my life felt like a John Hughes movie. But when he asked me to meet him at the library one day after school, my poor mom, acting on her Catholic conditioning, told me it was “inappropriate.” We laugh about it now, but it began my melodramatic view of romance, as he and I instead showed our feelings through love notes and mixed tapes.

The Murphys were “modest.” I never even wore a two-piece bathing suit until my twenties; I was more comfortable in a bomber jacket than a bikini, and being “sexy” was not remotely on my radar. Everything surrounding sex was shameful, including my own body.

“It’s different for girls,” can be applied to almost any scenario. If my brothers got someone pregnant, I doubt their first instinct would have been suicide. My dad called all four of his daughters “Princess,” but being the only petite one, with a penchant for the alternative, I was also his “Pixie.” In my mind, that no longer mattered. Now he’d think I was a slut. 

I had already disappointed my parents by requiring a full extra year to graduate. There were many reasons I ended up on the five-year plan – too much freedom at a young age, unresolved grief that resurfaced when Jenny Chance died my freshman year, and the increasing loss of identity that resulted from romantic relationships for which I wasn’t equipped.

I had two options, for I don’t consider them to be choices – suicide or abortion – and I pondered them both. I never “chose” to have an abortion. I was backed into a corner, with no one to turn to for guidance. Were it not for Planned Parenthood, and my ability to access a safe abortion, which is my legal right, I know with certainly that I wouldn’t be able to write this today, for the simple reason that I wouldn’t be here. 

And if it weren’t for the two friends who gave me their unconditional and non-judgmental support, I would have attempted to take my life. I didn’t want to die, and the thought of hurting myself in any way was terrifying and unthinkable, but I didn’t know how to live with the shame of what I had done. How could I have been so stupid?

To say that suicide is selfish is selfish in itself. Unless you’ve been in that place, feeling that desperation, you can’t begin to understand, and your judgement is something you should evaluate before it contributes to such feelings in someone you love.

Griffin’s first instinct was for us to become parents, perhaps to make up for the love he had been denied as a child. Perhaps that was a reason I was drawn to him. I naively thought my love was enough to save him from his past and his inevitable fate.

Our upbringings couldn’t have been more different. His parents were teenagers when he was born, his father was a heroin addict. He was raised by his father’s grandparents after his mother relinquished custody of him as a little boy. Griffin wasn’t even his real name; it was a nickname he gave himself on the middle school playground. A bookworm who loved Dungeons & Dragons and played in the school band, he was inspired by the mythical creature for a pseudonym. Although he idolized his father, for whom he was named, he resented him, and he didn’t want to end up the same way. He eventually disappeared one day as Griffin waited for him to pick him up to go fishing. He never saw his dad again, and it haunted him. I always secretly hoped I’d somehow find him and reunite them.

Griffin initially admired my loving family, but later he would use it as a weapon, among so many other things, to make me feel weak, telling me I didn’t have my own identity. Although his motive was cruelty, now I realize part of him was right.

Long before the internet and cell phones, I rifled through the yellow pages in my landlady’s kitchen when she was out volunteering for Catholic Charities. The irony was almost comical. Griffin and I hadn’t even had a proper first date, but we split the cost of the “procedure” as if we were going dutch on dinner. It was four hundred dollars, which may as well have been four hundred million. I had given up my job as a tutor in the campus writing center, to spend more time in my first dysfunctional relationship, and had spent my meager summer earnings shortly after the beginning of senior year. My second senior year, as I always shamefully had to admit. My dad used to stop by to see me on Saturdays on his way back to the Cape after teaching his writing class at BC, usually giving me a crisp and coveted twenty dollar bill. But I was avoiding him, terrified he would find out, and told him not to come.

Damian, who was paying his own tuition, gave me the $200 without hesitation.

It was too early in my pregnancy to have the procedure, so I had to wait two weeks. It took me years to fully understand the events surrounding the Oklahoma City Bombing, for at the time of the tragedy, I was in bed with morning sickness that lasted around the clock, praying my devoutly Catholic landlady wouldn’t notice. Years ago, I was diagnosed with a hiatal hernia, and I’ve always suffered from stomach issues, for it’s the place where my anxiety manifests. Therefore, I could barely function, trying to make it to class during those two weeks, but mostly writhing in pain in the bathtub, or curled up in my bed in the fetal position, trying to escape in the mindless drama of 90210 and Melrose Place. 

Griffin had to borrow his friend’s car, for his only means of transportation was a skateboard. It was the first and most significant red flag, which I ignored, for on the way to the clinic, he insisted we had to stop and pick up his friend, who also didn’t have a car, and needed to cash his paycheck. It was the most humiliating experience of my life, and I needed privacy, as I was curled up in the backseat, but he prolonged my physical and emotional pain.

I’ve only been to Providence three times since April 26, 1995: to the hospital when my niece was born, to see Chris Cornell on the Songbook tour, and most recently, to finally meet my friend Jim, the man who inspired the “Kevin from Providence” character in the film Spotlight. He was one of the earliest supporters of my clergy investigation, and is someone from whom I continue to take inspiration.

I’m lucky enough that I didn’t have to cross a picket line that morning. My heart aches for the women who do.

I vaguely remember Griffin sitting with me in the waiting room, for what seemed like hours, before they called my name. He was wearing his olive green canvas jacket, reading something by H.P. Lovecraft. I just learned when writing this that the author was born in Providence.

Years later, when I gave blood for the first time, in honor of my neighbor, the nausea, ginger ale, and pretzels triggered long-buried memories. But I never forgot the kindness of the woman who explained everything to me, and sat with me as I came to. She looked Irish, with fair skin and red hair, and even though I was barely conscious, I worried what she thought of me.

Griffin dropped me off at my house later that day, and Kelly drove up from the Cape with groceries, filling up my shelves with comfort food, giving me some money to have on hand. Simple gestures that meant everything. She and Damian saved my life.

Barely three weeks later, I received a blank degree at my commencement. I had written a note to my psychology professor, hoping for pity, explaining I was “going through a rough time.” I didn’t blame her when she failed me; I was so focused on Griffin, I hadn’t applied myself at all, long before the pregnancy. My poor parents were so disappointed, for I’d have to make up the three credits, but little did they know what a miracle it was we were there at all. I have no other recollection of that day, or Barney Frank’s remarks. Originally, all I wanted was a celebratory lunch in the Heights at Lawrence’s Restaurant with my family, but after everything that had transpired, I just wanted that chapter to be over. I was still feeling sick, weighing about ninety pounds, my fingernails bitten to the quick, when I walked across the stage.

By fall, I had been living at my parents’ house for a few months, butting heads with them over basic things, like wanting to use their car to see my boyfriend, simply because I was now a grown woman living under their roof. At my mother’s suggestion, I went to her doctor for a physical, and after a cursory exam and some quick questions about our mother/daughter relationship, she sent me home with a bag full of Zoloft samples, instructing me to take them. Ever obedient, I did, even though I wasn’t depressed, I was just frustrated, and they made me feel completely out of control. It was dangerous on her part, for there’s nothing wrong with responsibly prescribing an anti-depressant, but I could have and should have told her I didn’t need to be medicated, I needed to be liberated.

I moved up to our family home in Newton, where three of my siblings were living, and started working as a nanny for our dear friends, who had just welcomed twin girls. When I wasn’t changing diapers and pushing the double stroller, I was dropping and picking up the older kids at school, doing the grocery shopping, and cooking dinner. It was a special time, for I loved them all, and while in that domestic role, I could almost picture a similar future for myself.

Then the unthinkable, especially since I was finally on the pill at age 23, and we never took chances after what had happened, but we had another pregnancy scare. My late period was probably just due to my own anxiety around all of it, but for the two weeks I waited, I knew I couldn’t and wouldn’t have another abortion, so I resigned myself to the fact I was going to be a mother.

I had it all planned out – I would celebrate one final Christmas with my family, pretending everything was normal, and then cut myself off from them completely. Once again, the shame was so strong, it clouded my thinking, and I assumed they would disown me or want nothing to do with me.

Christmas came early when I finally got my period. The date is marked in my journal with an asterisk, just in case anyone ever found it and read it. Griffin was almost disappointed, and the topic was then prefaced with “someday.” Someday we’ll have a family. I had always loved the name “Fiona” from Brigadoon, but if we had a boy, I wanted to name him Owen, after my great-grandfather.

Griffin ultimately chose heroin instead.

Music from that time reminds me of him the most, Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness, the Smashing Pumpkins album he gave me for Christmas; Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, which I listened to every night when rocking the girls to sleep; and his favorite, The Beatles’ White Album.

I think of Griffin when I hear Mother Love Bone’s “Crown of Thorns,” symbolic in so many ways, the religious allusion and the drug metaphor. “He who rides the pony must someday fall.”

Despite his mistreatment of me, my heart still goes out to him. He never had a chance.

A year ago, I found myself whispering my secret in my mother’s driveway to a clergy sex abuse survivor, who has become a trusted friend. Not only did she inspire me with her bravery and honesty, she made me feel safe to speak my truth. My unspoken past is why I’m so committed to my investigation. I know what it’s like to suffer from debilitating shame perpetuated by the Catholic Church. To think that it would be easier if you weren’t here anymore. I didn’t want to die. But I couldn’t live with the shame. 

People have often told me they always thought I had the perfect family, the perfect life. Perfection is an illusion, and it’s a dangerous and unrealistic expectation of human beings. It takes all the joy out of life. I was ready to end mine for that reason alone. 

The more I’ve learned about the crimes that were committed in my own former parish, and others in my hometown, the more I am filled with rage and resentment. To think the Catholic Church views me as the ultimate sinner rather someone who rapes a child would be laughable, if it weren’t so painful, and it’s the first thought that comes to mind on the rare occasions I enter a church. It’s all I could think about as I toured The Vatican, an ostentatious museum full of penis statues, with occasional references to women merely as temptresses, a time-honored tale that began with “evil” Eve.

And to think the Catholic Church would have been responsible for my suicide because of its sanctimonious hypocrisy is criminal.

I’ve struggled for the past year about telling my mother. Part of me wanted to spare her the pain, but at the same time, I didn’t want either of us to leave this Earth without her knowing. I’m angry that I’ve been forced to keep this secret from her, and I want us to have the authentic relationship we were denied. At nearly 85, she is one of the most evolved and accepting people I know. She is more “Christian” than many people who describe themselves as such, despite, or perhaps because of the fact she stopped looking for God in a church years ago. Instead she has found her Higher Power in a 12-step community.

Since the death of Justice Ginsburg, and the insulting “confirmation” of Coney Barrett, I have suffered from what I now realize is PTSD. I have been triggered by the unthinkable cruelty of people who pass judgement from the safe distance of a keyboard, unbothered by the real life repercussions of their words. Or even worse, the people who’ve criticized me to my face without even knowing by expressing their “Pro-Life” views. I’m still terrified of being judged, wondering what people will think when they read this, and I’ve woken my husband on countless nights with my sobbing.

I recently spent some time with my mother’s older brother, helping with errands while his wife was in a rehabilitation facility following a shoulder injury. One day, while doing shopping and laundry, I felt nauseous as I noticed the 8×10 framed photo of Pope John Paul II, the largest on display in the room. Shame immediately washed over me, and I thought about bringing my secret to the grave.

What will they think when they find out?

The thought was immediately replaced with anger. If I had killed myself in 1995, I wouldn’t be here to help them today. I think of the family members I never would have met, if I had died 25 years ago.

Suicide has touched my family profoundly, as it has so many others. It wasn’t until my thirties that I learned my dad’s father, James Francis “Frank” Murphy Sr., my beloved Papa Murphy, lost two older brothers to suicide, and had to identify both bodies. His brother, Willie returned from WWI depressed and traumatized. He was working as a union steward and had been dipping into the union funds. The day before he was set to go before a review board, he jumped off a train into an oncoming train in Watertown. He couldn’t live with the shame.

Six months later, his brother Owen Jr. was found with his head in the oven, and my great-grandmother died soon after, most likely from the emotional toll. It’s impossible to reconcile such tragedy with my Papa, the sweet and gentle man who was always so happy to see me, making me feel special and safe.

Two generations later, our family history repeated, when my father’s sister’s oldest son died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and his younger brother discovered him.

Age and distance had always separated Bob and me. He was one of my cool California cousins, who occasionally came for exciting Cape Cod visits. I finally got to know him when I visited his family in California in 1998, the final stop on my cross-country trip with Damian, who dropped me off at my aunt’s house in Petaluma. I became the shy little kid again when Bob arrived for dinner at his brother Dave’s home in San Francisco, where I was staying.

“Hey, Cousin,” he said, with a twinkle in his brown eyes and a smirk behind his beard. He gave me a big bear hug, and I immediately felt comfortable.

When we got the phone call at my parents’ house in 2009, I could empathize with that feeling of helplessness, thinking you don’t have a choice.

I’d give anything to be able to tell him just how much I understand.

Two weeks ago, my mom and I peacefully “protested” in support of women’s rights, on Main Street in Falmouth, and she held a sign I had hastily made that morning, having no idea just how personal it was.

Three days later, I finally let it out, and cried like the 23-year-old girl who desperately wants to be forgiven.

My mother supports me unconditionally, as she always has.

When I told her what I think is the obvious, that my dad’s sobriety wouldn’t have survived if I had killed myself, she contradicted me, telling me he wouldn’t have survived at all.

It took years after Griffin to trust again, and when I finally did, I told Chris my secret immediately, wanting him to walk away instead of risking his finding out later and changing his opinion of me. Ever since then, he’s also supported everything I do. I feel a combination of gratitude and guilt, for I often think how his life would be different if he had married someone “normal” who could have made him the amazing father he would have been.

He is quick to contradict me too. We chose not to be parents, and he tells me he has no regrets. But I can’t help but wonder, for motherhood isn’t a door you slam shut. It’s a window you peer into occasionally, like passing by a cozy home on a dark night. It’s the tears that come while reading a bedtime story to your nieces and suddenly remembering you are just the aunt, a glorified babysitter. Society is unkind to women who don’t conform, especially those who choose not to have children, and even moreso, married women who make such a choice.

But it’s the women in this secret society who suffer even more, for somehow it’s become okay for everyone to talk about it except us. We’re not even allowed to grieve, for we feel as if it’s our fault.

People who don’t know me, and sadly people who do, believe I’m a “murderer” and a “baby killer.” Someone recently posted a graphic photo accusing Planned Parenthood of selling body parts of babies. Planned Parenthood saved my life, and was the only place where I could obtain the birth control that is every woman’s right. But by then it was too late. I had to get an abortion first.

As I write this on Samhain, and revisit the ghosts of my past, the little girl in me wishes my daddy were here to hold me and tell me it’s okay, and that I’m forgiven.

It’s time for me to forgive myself.

By Sarah E. Murphy

The Island Queen is making waves and taking strides to promote clean waters with the purchase and installation of the “Seabin,” Cape Cod’s very first floating trash bin. The device is part of a global initiative founded in Australia by two avid water lovers committed to reducing trash with the end goal of eventually making the need obsolete through education and awareness. The company was founded on a simple premise – trash cans are just as necessary in the ocean as they are on land. 

Island Queen Manager Michael Reposa discovered the Seabin Project last summer, after searching online for a solution to the trash build-up that he routinely witnesses firsthand in the water surrounding the Island Queen ferry terminal, located on Falmouth Heights Road. 

“All of us spend many hours a day, every day, standing at this dock, and when we first start maintenance on the boat in early May, you can see the bottom of the harbor. But as more people come, and more boats are in the water, it slowly becomes murkier,” he observed. 

Additionally, the boat is anchored in one of the harbor’s only inlets, so with the tide comes cigarette butts, fish heads, and plastic – specifically bags, food wrappers, and nip bottles – with microplastics proving to be one of the biggest culprits. To that end, the Seabin can collect items as small as two millimeters, objects unseen by the human eye but consumed by organisms in the local food chain. 

Mr. Reposa believes the majority of the trash is not a result of intentional littering but primarily accumulates in the harbor from storm drains and wind. Despite the use of a pool skimmer, the problem continued. 

“Keeping the area clean was becoming a full-time job,” he said. 

Mr. Reposa spent a few months last year in the off-season researching the innovative Seabin technology, founded in 2017 by an engineer and a boat-builder, and learned the product could be purchased and shipped from a company in Canada. He presented his findings to his employer, owner Charlie Bardelis Jr., who agreed to the idea immediately.

Cape Cod’s first Seabin is now up and running. Custom signage is being created by Locust Street Sign Company in Falmouth, and the Island Queen will cross-promote its participation in the global effort with Seaside Sustainability of Gloucester.

A quiet motor on the bottom of the Seabin creates suction, pooling and collecting small trash, while making it easier to reach in and grab the larger items that are also attracted. The unassuming piece of machinery connects to a floating dock, so it rises with the tide, and remains at water level. 

According to the Seabin Project, 8.1 million tons of mismanaged waste enters our oceans each year, and each seabin has the capacity to catch a half ton of debris annually, in the form of:90,000 plastic bags; 16,500 plastic bottles; 35,700 disposable cups; 16,500 plastic bottles, and 166,500 plastic utensils.

General Manager Todd Bidwell credited Mr. Reposa for introducing the idea and Mr. Bardelis for his commitment to clean oceans.

“When Mike told us about this initiative, and that this would be the first Seabin on Cape Cod, we thought it was a fantastic idea. By purchasing and installing the Seabin, we now feel like we’re contributing to the health of Falmouth Harbor, which ultimately is going to benefit not just the businesses and residents of the area, but all our waterways, in Falmouth and beyond. Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend,” he said. 

Mr. Reposa credited Mr. Bardelis and Mr. Bidwell for recognizing the importance of such an investment. 

“One Seabin isn’t going to clean up the whole harbor, but it’s a start in the right direction,” he said. 

For more information about the Seabin Project, follow The Island Queen on Facebook or visit seabinproject.com.