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September 1971 |
| Written by John Wells | |
| Thursday, 13 March 2008 | |
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Share it:      It was now late September, and one afternoon in the mid-week, he decided to take a bicycle ride up to the mountain. During the ride up, he felt the warm sun penetrate his shoulder muscles. He was working up a good sweat peddling up the steep terrain and was breathing rapidly. At the top of the mountain, he surveyed the city and ocean views in the distance. He began to take on a reflective mood, remembering this time of year in his past: It was l971. He was just fourteen. His mother had been drinking again and was staying at the institute. He was alone for a little while during the month. Even though school had started up, he was nowhere into it, and because of the instability of any parental guidance, he felt it did not matter. He really did not care if he completed Grade 10 this year. He wanted to break away from it. He could not see its purpose. He could not apply what he was learning there to his world. School made no sense to him at this time. The real world was away from school. One evening, his uncle Harry came to visit him and check on the house to see if everything was all right. He talked with Harry for most of the evening. Harry said, “Well, this isn’t good. How about if I take you back with me to Salt Spring in the morning? On the island, I have a few cement laying jobs to look at. I’ll take you with me.” Oh what a delight it was to be with his Uncle. What a beautiful thing. Here his uncle was not forcing anything upon him such as regularly attending school or keeping the house up. He felt as though Harry was giving him a second mini-summer vacation, and what a benefit it could prove to be. Now, he would be out of school and in the real world, and maybe he could learn something such as a trade, but he misunderstood Harry’s intentions. Harry did not have time to apprentice him. He had too much work to do. Still, the time he spent with Harry was appreciated. Harry was family; but his wife and two children came first. A few days on the island, and what a different world it was. His mother and him had spent a few summers on the island as well as Easters and Thanksgivings. But the summers were the best because every day he could walk down from the house and spend the day swimming in Vesuvius Bay. Very little responsibility was placed upon him; He usually slept in until 10:30 am, and then after a cereal and toast breakfast he would take his air mattress and head down to the beach. Sometime around 4:45 pm, his mother and his aunt Mary would come down to the beach with his cousins, and then everybody would leave about 6:00 pm to have dinner with Harry who would just be arriving home from a good day of work. It was not quite the same when Harry took him to the island this time. The summer was over and there was no swimming. Still, he found it pleasant to explore the trails and hills of the island. He could really get lost here and forget the hard realities of school and his mother’s condition. Some of the innocence had passed since those earlier visits with his mother but not all of it A few days had passed, and on a Friday evening, his uncle Harry said, “I’ll have to take you back home on Tuesday. Your brother, Jim, and his wife have offered to come and stay with you for a few weeks and help out until your mother is better.” This was all right with him. He loved his brother Jim. This brother was the gentle brother. If his brother and wife had ever wanted children, they would be good parents. Still, in the context of time, it was Friday night, and he had three more days of exploring and experiencing this slower and acceptable pace of island life, and as long as his uncle and family lived here, he could always return for visits. As he looked back and remembered this period in 1971, he concluded that this could have been a turning point in his life. “I could very well had become a different person than the one I am today,” he said aloud. “I could have been shaped differently and been a stronger more confident character, and maybe could have been happier. Right then, I could have become somebody else and somebody else could have become me,” he thought. He contemplated more upon the day. The bike ride up to the mountain left with him with a surprising sense: He said, “This has actually been one of the best days of my life. Today, I have been removed from my mindset. I got caught up in past and present moments, and for a while, I just enjoyed living. I wasn’t thinking about things I had to do.” Copyright 2008 John Wells |
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