“You’re good at clamming, Jeanne.  You’re lucky,” said Mom.

I don’t feel lucky as my feet blindly search for clams in the muck in the water, the cool, blue water of Long Island Sound, at Pear Tree Point Beach in Darien.  Clamming is not the same without Daddy.  Life is not the same without Daddy.  The clams thunk instead of snap.  It’s a chore to lug the heavy, clam-filled basket to the beach blanket where Mom leisurely soaks up God’s summer sun.  It’s a chore, chore, chore, to clean the guts out of the clams after they cool from steaming open, their boiled flesh widly exposed in gray shells that are piled up in the pot on the stove.  Thunk, thunk, thunk, I go through life blindly.