When Lobsters Molt They are Highly Vulnerable - Some Even Eat Their Old Shells to Build Back Their Walls Faster

I would say I am like a filter feeder, sucking in, sorting, and spitting out sixty years of family home-fill. But in Gloucester, as I wait in line at Surfside Subs for Monday’s $13.99 buttery lobsta roll special, I realize the apt analogy is lobster. And, since I’ve grown in agency, this works better. Lobsters are sea-floor excavators, omnivore-rovers, bottom crawlers. Left-clawed like me. Crunch down hard. Crack shells. Delve the depths of the ocean’s shadows. Father was left-clawed too— before the ruler knocked it out of him— and likely soft, once. But his mother clipped his attuned parts. Lobsters have antennae, and fine cilia on their legs to sense everyone and everything around them in the murk. My mother’s journal says I was highly sensitive. Deep in her files I find articles on “How to parent the very shy child.” Before his death, my father smirked at the lobster rolls I brought for him. I didn’t realize— all those years that they offered the delicacy to guests come for sea-side visits— he didn’t eat it. He used to say, “When my grandfather was little, Lobster was called ‘poor man’s food.’ You could walk onto the beach littered with them and pick your supper.” It was about appearances. “Shameful” to feed these prehistoric creepers to your family more than once a week. Recently he added, “They gather to feed around the sewer pipe outlet in Sandy Bay. You want to eat that?” Lobsters have extra teeth in their bellies to crunch down all the hard sundries they ingest. I discover my mother’s letters to him as I clear the house. “Dearest, just because I wanted to see for myself if the chair fit behind the table when you said it wouldn’t, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I love you desperately. Please believe me and help me try to be the demure, quiet, non-argumentative, non-opinionated wife that you can love. I know I can do it with your help.” This takes leagues of teeth in my stomach to digest.