First Day of Summer in a Prescribed Paradise

So summer arrived at 8 something here on the coast of North America that's sees it first. So be it. My evening was listening to blue grass music as its called here at our legion. I feel there among the seniors (I am close to the youngest participant) that I am among my Hatfield family, long lost, along some holla on the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy in West Virginia. Know that I only visited Williamson once, to visit the family cemetery. There Anse Hatfield, a hero of the Confederacy stands tall in marble along Mate Creek. Yes, Matewan fame. He was either my GGGrandad or Uncle depending on who slept with whom. In any case I was born dead-eyed shooting a revolver, so maybe there is something to the DNA thing.

My mom, Aunt and grand mom only talked in their hidden language among us....they would use certain letters to create whole words, for example "Fuff A Cause EE". Which meant face "face". Later I learned that during the feud they had to be careful about what they said. I think that secret way of talk among the Hatfield clan has never been said before...but I won't say it all...

Here the spring peepers of my youth on the streams are still singing. At this latitude it has just broken dark and its almost 10PM.

The trout fishing here on the island is pretty good. There are decent sea-run brook trout of the same type I caught with my father and son in the streams of Pennsylvania. When they go into the sea hey grow fatter and take on a silver tone. The little bright dots of blue-ringed red gone and bellies fat from a time in the salt. They are profound.

Here, I am completely "islandized". I am a member of the social clubs and accepted by nearly all the folks that considered me an off-lander and even a "Yankee". Its a gentle strain of people who crave the world across the ferry or the bridge but just can't go. Many have left for work in the Alberta tar sands or even the states. Those that remain lust for the annual Florida or Las Vegas vacation. My former and lovely young wife has either been deported for working without a visa or simply disappeared.

A fishing friend or mine, who has shown me great great trout streams (Up West-meaning anywhere West of our little town) works at the potato plant. He tells me that his job is to use water jets and flumes to get the crop into the hoppers. He works second shift sorting potatoes in a stark warehouse here. His name is Glen. His life is also an abject tradgedy but he is one of the few lucky enough to have a job, and looks forward to our fishing trips to his home town up West near O'Leary. There are some serious sea-trout to be caught.

My relationship with my island girl continues. She is stoic from a truly horrible childhood of parental loss, no running water, and struggling here in the 1950's. I am talking incest, physical attack, and rural horror.

Such a run from my personal background. When we go out she makes her face and hair flawless, trying to achieve a recognition for beauty that she has never known. She is Mary, the lady I see here. She is as far from Shel or a desert sunrise as a human could be, but she is my Mary.


Here as a retiree the days come and go. The tourists are starting to arrive and the hopeless little shops are opening. A place of real beauty-but one has to stay here to find it. Cape Breton is more rugged and prettier. Nova Scotia has Halifax and the great Eastern shore and the Annapolis Valley. New Brunswick, our "drive through province" has the Bay of Fundy and the Miramachi. And don't consider the awful "Magnetic Hill".

I have few complaints but I do miss my family and my desert-oddly enough. But the sun shines and my skin tans under a maritime sun by my abode alone along the beach.

Its what I wanted. No real financial worries, no relationship issues and a place to fish...a truck that will take me anywhere. I can see the point lighthouse from my home.

Still...I feel a missing..a longing..is this it?

My mom used to ask me during my business and consulting days-"What am I running from".

Maybe I can get out of block and finally write the story. Now that most of the pain is settling, and I actually have something to say.

OK-Maybe not totally "islandized". My gorgeous French-speaking dental hygienist said to me at the end of picking my teeth last week..."Your from the states!" Accent. I am working on it. Its easier to learn Canadian inflection than Russian when I went there so long ago on a UN mission.

She also said that she has rarely seen anyone my age here that HAD all of his original teeth...ok, I have one gold crown.

Old Stew and Cats

So we move into a modest rainy summer on my island. Yes old stew. I just had a hankering (spelling) for the stew my mom made. I found an old soup bone, ripe with good island beef at our co-op. Yes, a turnip, island potato and whatever else I had in my larder. But its not MOMS stew-close, as she said when I was but a boy put the tomatoes in last-and her little basket of Herb's that I have so much trouble duplicating here.

It reminds me so much of her teachings about cooking and using fresh herbs in the pot. Also of Arizona, among the garden that was just beyond my home. All the fine food that I made with long lost wife.

Cats came tonight...my neighbour Betty in a panic. The local tabby had kittens in the pouring cold rain by my humble abode, outside by a pile of sticks. She had been in here, looking, gravid, but I turned he away. Well my neighbour Betty found the kittens and the are safe and warm, nursing in my humble place by the ocean. Tonight.

So the mom kitty and hers stay with me tonight.

A chance meeting

That afternoon I had just left my office in Norristown, Pennsylvania. It was the fall of 1984. My pal and I always went to work out at the nautilus club on route 202 near the office. Then we would roll up old US route 202 to a place called Alphafa's. There would we have a beer maybe some snacks and my forever girlless friend Phil wait hopefully to meet the woman he wanted to meet.

There was a tall lady, dressed well sitting at the end of the bar. She was a bit loud but had a nice curly doo and was very friendly. As my friend shunk into his his seat (as usual) I asked the lady what she she did as we did back in the 80's. She said said that she was a computer type who worked at a bank. After a time she said she was waiting for a girlfriend, who was a veterinarian.After a time she offered to buy us a a snack. I was well moneyed and a bit amused, but we accepted.

At that time I had just broken up with my high school girl Carol, and was looking for a business oriented attractive girl to carry on with my dreams of HTS, my own environmental consulting practice.

Well the evening was over and I followed her out of the restaurant. she resisted, so I opened the door of her Audi turbo and offered my phone number. It was NO no no

But a week later I got a call and we went on a date to see the movie Ghost busters..she laughed so hard that the whole movie crowd was laughing at her not the movie

We were married a year later...there would be no Joey or Alexis...Shelly would not have her new marriage to ...something to consider Paul Perry, and I would not not be waiting on Prince Edward Island without that chance meeting so long ago....the moral being that chance meetings may not be anything but fate

So comes on the spring. Much time has passed since the entry of the blue moon. The kids seem fine and I slowly recover from my ordeal of hospitals and health. In no way will I recount the experience of near death and all the usual BS that goes along with that.

The good news is I am breathing and I have been fishing. Fishing for fine fresh trout in the nearby streams. It loses something without my son and other disconnections but it is still beautiful and life-giving. (perhaps not for the fish)

The full moon of late May has waned to gibbous as June arrives mostly with a chilly rain. My habitation is not the charming place I was in up until this past winter, but it is warm and close to the beach.

I continue to miss family, both genetic and legally bound prior. My mission now is wholeness, a completion of the short story compendium and my own sanity.

It has been said by a famous person that the madness is only temporary-we shall see or sea.

Will I stay in this place of beaches of migrate to past fondness remains to be seen.

But after 6 months I have finally made a journal entry. There shall be more.

"Short Note" on the Blue Moon

Its "Twice in a Blue Moon" for me. The winter solstice coming on Prince Edward Island with a warm snow-killing white Christmas destroying rain. Here for me among the decorated cottages and Victorian homes I walk in the evening to observe the frozen pond at our memorial park. Often a coin is tossed with a hope for all as always for an abundance.

This blue moon, or the second full moon within the same calendar month comes appropriately on December 31. The last such moon was on May 29, 2007. That twas the night before I was to travel to New Hampshire and pick Shel up at the airport after her last trip home, to Colorado. I am mired in the bizarre and ironic. This Christmas season marks the first time we are truly out of touch in nearly 18 years.

The end of this year marks many conclusions in my life and the life of our family. Romantically, a once very pleasant long-term relationship formally ends and a more stressful and more recent dalliance concludes simply and with a hint of relief. The death of my sister in October ends the existence of my immediate family on this earth save one (me). Both of my adult children are on their way into life in various states of confusion or over-confidence so much like teenagers.

So Christmas alone here on this island selected as my refuge seems just fine. Much better than the uproarious time two years ago here when emotions were so high as marriage writhed in its last ugly death throws. Nor as last year when I sat with my sister, ailing in her silent suffering, over a meager and reluctant Christmas meal during my now rare winter off-island. As for so many, this time of year for my family has been difficult. In our case, now only MY case, since the 1970's. I have written so much on that that it is time to move on.

It is also time now write the conclusion. Not this journalistic read here that is completed only out of reverence for 30 years of diaries penned by me, now lost. But to actually do "something". The novel or collection of short stories to be.

As a dear old friend has advised me many times, "You can do anything you want-create businesses, speak, teach, why are you just waiting?". Well for us the emotions run deep as does the brilliance. My sister was absolutely brilliant but in the actual world would have been and was considered a "loser". I wasn't. I created millions and just walked away from it. Now thats a tale someone might read. And I have learned the most from my friends turned enemies.

The experience of that loss has honed my instincts on human nature to a very sharp edge. For the most part its pretty ugly. The beauty of nature and a fine trout stream sustained me while I have endured my vacation here. It is the, the rare kind deed that is truly unselfish I search for.

The rarest concept to consider or act upon for today, at the time of this Christmas for all of us should be an act made or observed of true forgiveness. It is a very rare thing, this "forgiveness" and nary seen in fact by action other than meaningless words. Forgiveness is a tangible act of the spirit uniquely human. I seek a spirit that can really take that leap of faith. Another rarity is the ability to go through life without fear. This is a true Christian value. These are as rare as a blue moon, or rarer. Forgiveness within a life without fear.

Go on without fear. Ask yourself this year what are you afraid of-nothing? Losing your money, your lover,wife, family, gold, looks, car, house, food....the list is long and usually obvious. What about losing your soul? What is of value to you. Do you I have one?

Trust me on this matter I speak from experience. To fully push the envelope to prove a point may be madness, and perhaps I am guilty. As a writer I can only tell of what I have lived and what I have experienced, so perhaps its been worth it.

The New Year's of the Blue Moon should help you stop and pause-look up at the sky and figure out your real place in the universe. So few even look at the sky. Stop and observe it. If life still makes little or no sense walk away from all that makes you comfortable and try a new world and a new life. Experience that and grow as a viable spirit verses an automaton on a fake material world and a black and white life.

It has been said that a life lived in fear is half a life. I disagree. It is no life at all. Remember the mandala and its significance.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year-Go live it in honesty without fear, with charity, forgiveness and appreciation. For me that means going fishing with my son, maybe a trip home to Arizona and whatever is in my path that needs doing. What does it mean to you?

Mid-November

Finally got a chance to sit and write a few lines. I have been busy dealing with my sisters estate from afar. Since I am in Canada I have to give administration of Aprille's things to the attorney, Joie Rehcamp. My son was going to take care of it but his mother has erroneously convinced him it will somehow put him on the hook for money. Now I will have to pay a lawyer to do what Joey could have done and earned himself a few bucks. But he is very busy with work and school so I understand. I just wish he didn't hang on his mothers every word, as she is often just plain wrong.

The realtor that I have hired sent some pictures of the little house. It looks ransacked. Aprille kept it so neat. Her TVs and most other electronics are missing. The new futon that she loved has disappeared. I think the cousins must have thought that I had not been there nor knew what was in the house. I gave Bettejean, the daughter of my mothers oldest brother, the refrigerator for a church donation. Perhaps that meant "help yourself".

I do not really care. But it is very disrespectful and I myself felt a bit violated. In our family, and perhaps in most, when someone dies alone, the first "relative" on-site takes what plunder they may want.

It is tough to see what few remaining trinkets and art I knew in my childhood alone in that place. I think of all the abandoned properties I have inspected over the years and of flea-markets. There the last remaining worthless but sentimental treasures of a past life fade away to the dump or someone else's nick-knack shelf.

Little things of beauty meant so much to my mother and sister. The paintings, driftwood, colorful glass of all kinds. Some items belonged to our Great grandmother , Mary Riley. I suspect that these won't be preserved as I am stuck here and have no truly reliable caretaker.

Cold and harsh is the modern world. I suspect at the conclusion of all this I may be able to return to the States for a time. The where and why and when has yet to be determined.

In any case its a bright cool day here on the island. Winter looms as does my 53rd birthday one week from today. I may never know why my 61 year old sister, who seemed healthy in March, just died alone. An old friend told me sometimes an artistic heart just cannot bear the ugliness of the world and reality of life here. I think that my son is right when he says his aunt died of lonliness. She was lost without our mother.

Somehow I have managed to be tougher and more resolute than my sister. I am not as intelligent as she was. But she was my preschool teacher and allowed me to love a life of learning and travel. After the disaster of my life with Shel and the inordinate amount of suffering that caused I feel that some are correct in stating I am too sensitive and a dreamer.

My mother told me all we retain are our dreams and memories. Perhaps I do not hold the keys to fort knox, but in memories and dreams I am rich. Both fulfilled and unrealized. Maybe when I leave this place finally mission accomplished I can write the tale and again sit in the sun.

A legacy of visions.

FALL

So the fall is almost gone now. Its brilliant and very crisp. I found out from my son last Friday that my sister passed away at home sometime around that date. A visitor couldn't get an answer at the door so the police were called, broke in and found her in final rest in her living room chair. I had wondered why my calls and letters had been unanswered. I knew she was lonely and not feeling well when I left to return home last March.

I just wish I could have stayed local and been of some help-but at least we had our final trip together to the New Jersey shore of our childhood. I had hoped to stay nearby longer but dealing with family realities in Harrisburg and the unfriendliness of it made me long to return to the island.

Aprille had wanted to visit but I had to drive round-trip again and I just wasn't up to it after the ordeal in Pennsylvania last winter.

The family is all together again now save for one-yes, the last of the "Manduka's"- I hope my children get on the stick with career and weddings so I can see some grandkids-one thing is for sure I am next on the list.

Aprille was cremated at Newmyer funeral home in Harrisburg as per her request. The ashes are at our cousin Bettejean "Sis" Weber's home of Etters, and are to be scattered about my mothers ashes in the rose garden at the family home at 3937 Walnut Street.

I am glad cousin sissie (Mom's brother's-Harold Hatfield daughter) and her husband Russ have tried to help my sister and check on her during my travels. It is a shame my children, only a few miles away never really got to know or understand her life and talents, and pains. She was much like Van Gogh, but in actuality a much better artist.
She was my mentor and teacher who had me reading and doing math, playing chess at age 5.

Her intelligence misunderstood caused her pain and rejection in a cruel world. At age 61, missing her family and probably still our life on our Bucks County farm in the 60's and our trips to the Mexico, Florida, Canada and the New Jesey shore and Wyalusing (Homet's Ferry,PA) as children, succumbed as only a sensitive can to the ugliness of a wanton and brutal modern world, perhaps as it is.

She expressed herself in her music, writing and most of all art-I hope it can be preserved as her testimony.