John Lennon and Paul McCartney
The air is sweet and fresh here. It is purple clover and salt and it is wild roses and fresh-cut hay. Its perfume bathes my senses. I breathe deeply into my lungs and I am calmed by its purity. We walk down the long lane, my cousin and I, away from my grandmother’s house and toward the road below. We call to a few lazy cows munching in the pasture by the barn but they ignore us. Silly cows we say. From far away, up on the mountain that is behind the house, we hear the distant frantic bleating of a baby lamb looking for its mother. Here, in the middle of the lane we come to the big puddle. It is always there. Even after days of heat it does not go away. We jump across it, the heels of our shoes catching on its muddy, slippery edges. Neither of us falls.

We walk this lane beside golden fields that slope gently away from the house until they meet the dirt road below. Across the road, and the fields continue until they meet the sea, the blue, ever so blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean; shards of brilliant glass scattered across it in the sunshine. So sharp and bright my eyes hurt. The sea in turn goes on until it meets the open expanse of cerulean skies beyond that. There is not a cloud to be seen. The day is a gentle warm welcome.

We turn toward the village, my cousin and I, our shoes kicking up dust as we walk on this unpaved road between the fields. There are fat dusty raspberries growing on bushes and we stop to pick a few and pop this one by one into our mouths. They burst warm and sweet juice on my tongue. We laugh together and I am content. We hear a noise and keep to the side of the road, single file, scratching our legs on the raspberry bushes, but we are out of the way of the pick-up truck that passes by. Slowing down, the driver honks his horn and waves his hand in friendly recognition. We wave back. You two want a ride? No thanks, we say, it’s a great day for a walk.

The road winds around a bend and we cross the little wooden bridge. Our sturdy brown shoes make clomping, hollow sounds on the wooden planks. We drop small stones and watch them fall, plop, plop, plop into the water below. Little brown birds singing and a few bees droning near the wild daisies are all that we hear now that the spitting of the truck’s wheels on the gravel and dirt has moved on.

We take a shortcut through the old cemetery, pushing open the ripped and broken wire gate. It creaks and stops part way, caught on itself. We squeeze through anyway. We walk through tall grasses, our legs brushing against them with a hush, hush, hush. We look at the names, now only faintly etched into the worn grey headstones. Some have an olive tinge of moss growing along their leaning sides. We try to read the printing, almost invisible on the little metal plaques attached to a few iron crosses. At an earlier time my mother designed them and my grandfather made them at his forge. We walk past, among, and over the gentle green mounds and then climb the ragged fence at the other end. We come out near the church. It is white and dazzling in the sunlight. Its spire is tall and the only thing we see against the blue of the sky. We pass by, bowing our heads slightly and making the sign of the cross. We do not go in.

We walk to the T in the road. To the right are the few shops of the village: a small grocery store, a post office and the store that sells yarn and sewing patterns. To the left is an empty building that will one day be a small museum, but not today, not yet. We cut across the Main Street, or Front as it is sometimes called, and zigzag our way between a few houses.

There is fresh bread baking when we get to my cousin’s house on Back Street. We are hungry from our walk and eye the still hot loaves just out of the oven and resting on and under clean white tea towels. Let them cool, my aunt says. We don’t want to wait and we begin to slice the bread. I want the heel and my cousin gives it to me. Crusty and golden on the outside and soft and warm and white on the inside, the salty homemade butter melts pale yellow into it, and I bite, teeth and tongue wanting more immediately.

After dinner we sit on the railing of the veranda. My back is against one of the wooden posts. Across the road we can see the buildings whose front doors face, instead of us, the main street. There is the village hall and beside that the parking lot that is filling with the cars of people going to the dance. We watch as stars appear one by one in the sooty, blue-black sky. They are like crystals being slowly spilled on the ever-darkening tablecloth of night. We sit and hear the laughter of people as they enter the hall. We are not old enough to go but we listen to the clapping of hands, and to the pounding of feet keeping time on the wooden floor, as the fiddle sings its Gaelic airs, its jigs and reels long into the night. This music, this time will stay with me forever.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall

John Lennon and Paul McCartney But here there is no sun. Buildings taller than I have ever seen block the sky. They are grey and black, iron and steel. Glass and mirrors, their windows reflect the other buildings and the already big city is multiplied. Towers, for business and for entertainment, stretch ever higher, their fingers grabbing at the clouds I can not see. The rattling of the subway behind me, I emerge with the multitude, climbing my way out of the bowel of this place to find my spot, my square of grey sidewalk. The heat is a wall of wool, a blanket and I fight to breathe. I walk, not knowing if I am going in the right direction. I am one with the moving crowd.

The din is overwhelming. There are sounds I do not recognize and smells I do not like. A siren slices ever upward, a backward symphony, screaming first its discordant crescendo, and finally fading, a pianissimo of distant sound. Then directed by an unseen conductor it begins an encore over and over and over. The farther you are from this concert the better; the best seat is not near the orchestra pit but in the distant safety of the back of the hall. Each siren duet, each harsh clanging, banging, chugging quartet explodes in my ears. Fire trucks, police cars, emergency vehicles are the musicians, I think, that bring hope or fear, dread or salvation to the members of this audience, this audience of millions. Other sounds, other musicians join the city orchestra, none on cue. Motorcycle engines rip and buses squeal and fart out gases, grey and heavy. I gag on them Jackhammers, th-th-th, th-th-th, crack open the top layer of this place, hurting its concrete skin. Horns honk as tires squeal their impatience and worn and weary drivers yell obscenities at other drivers.

Food-smells: the raw, the cooked and the garbaged, invade my nostrils. Spices my tongue does not know and whose acquaintance it does not yet wish to make are greeting my stomach, which flips and flops as it tries to reach my throat. I retch. I walk. Too many fried onions, the over sweet smell of rotting fruit, meat cooking, frying, broiling. And always the sweat, the pungent sharp smell of sweat. It is too hot. I am not hungry now.

I walk among, through, over, past the inhabitants: the workers, the visitors, the doers, the dreamers, those found and those lost. My body turns to avoid those scurrying with briefcases; my eyes those sleeping in doorways. People are talking, screaming, crying, chatting, to those they can see and to those they can not. Eavesdropping, I hear fleeting snatches of conversation that only slightly pique my curiosity as I pass. Taxi! Damn, I missed the bus...Will you call...? Are we going...? Buy Shhhh....we’ll talk la...Honey we have to talk... don’t care wh.. Isn’t it awful about..? Did you hear...? The world is...

And other sounds, other words in different languages swirl over me, hinting at exotica I have only read about.

A panhandler, a young man my age, reaches out his hand, palm up. He makes eye contact and smiles at me. He is the only person smiling at anyone. I shake my head numbly and walk on.

I look from side to side in search of an escape and see old, grey, stone steps leading up to the heavy, open, wooden doors of a church. I sigh, and the expelled breaths calm me as I climb the smooth, worn stairs to follow a Gregorian chant into the calm, familiar sanctuary of incense and wooden pews and stain glass windows. I find a seat at the back and sit in the semi dark, in the cool. An organ is being played and I listen to its gentle music. My back resting against the hard wooden pew, I close my eyes and I begin to feel that perhaps there is hope that I will not always feel like a salmon swimming against the current of this big city.

************************************************** And I know I will never lose affection For people and things that went before I know I’ll often stop and think about them In my life I loved you more.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney

I am frightened. In this instant, this moment I am forgetting the smell of salt air and seaweed and fog. I crave it, that scent of fish and sun and brine. I close my eyes and breathe deeply and try to find that memory that would fill me with home. But it fades and that photograph in my mind, the one that brings that essence to me is gone. Fading and forgetting, it happens when the faces of loved ones, distant now, can not be recalled. Not abandoned, but closed eyes can no longer bring them forward. That same feeling of sorrow and emptiness; home has drifted away, carried by an ocean of time into a place I can no longer find. I have lived here too long, longer than I lived by the sea. Here, where there is no ocean breeze; here where water has no wondrous bite. (The time I have been away is too long.)

We meet at a party, you and I. We talk. You too are from away. Not near my home, but near enough. You know the longing for the sand and rocks and sea urchins. You know the forgetting that saddens us both. We talk and laugh and love. Together, we try to find a new place for us to remember

Together we journey forward. We drive across this land and are surprised to find splendour in western fields that go on forever. We begin to admit they too might be an ocean. The blue of the flax, the yellow of the canola, the sifting blonde and tawny grasses undulate in a fluid, slow dance back and forth. A soft breeze is blowing them; they are the waves of this place. The seeds atop them are the whitecaps. They barely make a sound, but listen, and they will whisper to you, a song of the quiet. A melody, tranquil, subtle; attend and you will hear it.

This sky here is vast; wider, higher, bluer, an infinite canopy above us, around us, on and over and beyond. Nothing breaks this sky or these fields; no trees get in the way, no tall buildings interrupt its magnificence. This sky and those fields meet in the unbroken distance and we can see their joining; their embrace We have sea of blue above, an ocean of gold below. We think that this new ocean, this new sky may have a place for us.

Later, a night storm. Jagged lightening cuts the darkened sky. We see it knife and slice into the darkness, cutting it into zigs and zags, a long, yellow-white cracking that breaks the infinity of this blackness. I am filled with humility to be in this place of wonder. There is nothing else to see on this prairie, at night, in a storm.

We drive on searching for a haven, that till now has been just a mark on a map, on an invisible border between two provinces.. There are hills, the map tells us. Hills, we laugh, in this flat place? But we are unwise wrong silly to mock thi, for the hills laugh back at us and the tall pine trees smile at our disbelief and shower us with their scent to let us know that they are truly there.

Our hearts have wandered, searching to find a place to rest, a place for peace and for prayer. These prairie oceans and these laughing pines are a sanctuary, a prayerful place for the healing heart. The trees reach skyward toward the heavens, their gentle touching of each other a sithurism of song. We stand beneath, between, among green spires that surround us and we stare upwards, and upwards. I close my eyes and listen as this gentle choir sings its hymns, its anthis, and its chorus to my grateful heart, which leaps in recognition of this joyful noise. I draw in a breath as the trees release their incense, fresh and clean and pure in the sunlight of this open cathedral.

The pungent spice of the waters of my life will issue a siren’s call to me all my days. But now too, the laughing pines and the endless ocean fields drifting slowly in a summer’s breeze have become a harmony within the discord. I have left thi a piece of myself and in return they are within my soul. With you beside me in this place, my heart is home.

Ellen Richards was born, raised and schooled in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She spent many happy childhood summers in Gaelic-speaking Cape Breton, and is now learning the Scots Gaelic language. Ellen has put her toes in the oceans off both the east and west coasts of Canada, and feels fortunate to have been able to travel to the Rockies and the Prairies and to many points in between. Ellen is a co-founder of The Newmarket Writers Society, has completed numerous writing classes in York Region and is presently enrolled in creative writing courses at the University of Toronto. As a recently retired teacher from the York Region District School Board, where she taught reading, writing, ESL and music, Ellen is spending her time writing and traveling. She and her husband Garry have lived in Newmarket for over 25 years where they have raised their two children Ian and Catherine.