Distance Learning

by Claire Massey


As a child, she learns about endings, about unwanted beginnings. She remembers her father in the silvery bow of his skiff. He glides her over sandbars, through cloudless air and quiet water. They drift beside cordgrass and wax myrtle. She listens to a lullaby of slow drips from the paddle. He speaks. New wife, new baby, new life, another city. He will love her just the same. Of course, he will. She stops listening. She knows now he was young, susceptible in that way imperceptible to his daughter.

Her brother believes in Father Knows Best, philosophy is for sissies, all wars are necessary. He moves to Ohio. Kent State happens. He joins Veterans Against the War. A lifetime later, and still, he beats time on the wheel, sings with the radio, it ain’t me. I’m not your fortunate son. She knows now that distance transforms.

Her mother does not remarry. She puts herself through art school. She paints light in Italy, halos the heads of urchins, pensioners. Makes olive trees, gondolas, cathedral doors, glow. Her paintings sell. Christmas Eve prompts a phone call. You should have flown over, her mother says, heard the chorus. I’m sending you an oil of the candelabras. She knows now all mothers weren’t meant to mother.

Her lover said just give him time, the distance that creates perspective. For months she listens to break-up songs. I can’t make you love me if you don’t. Her father’s old maps are still in his trunk. She finds a good town and leaves first. She knows now what the gift of time costs.

Decades removed from her family of origin, her original lover, she strokes her skiff forward with ease, closes the distance to shore. She’s learned whitewater, how to dodge snags, run bars, stay upright in shoals, escape eddies that reverse the flow. She knows now how to read the currents that mean, she doesn’t have to paddle so hard.


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Claire Massey finds joy in discovering and supporting literary artists who further our quest for understanding of self and the world. Among other journals, recent work has appeared in Snapdragon Journal of Art and Healing, Lucky Jefferson 365 Collection, Halfway Down the Stairs, POEM, Persimmon Tree and Bright Flash Literary Review. She is Poetry Editor for the quarterly magazine, The Pen Woman. Driver Side Window, her collection of flash stories, poems, memoir vignettes and interpretive photographs, debuted in October, 2022.