Last Visited as a Child

It was a place of miracles. As a adult, Merry didn't always live up to her name. As a child, she definitely did.

Merry thought about this place of her childhood as she finished up her 3D model. She loved the challenge of designing home decor in her office studio, but she missed the fresh air in this place of miracles.

This place of miracles had the material she worked with most, the wood of the maple tree.

She relished tomorrow as her last day at the design firm. Ten years had been fruitful and she would miss working with the friends she had made during that time. But she couldn't wait to get back East.

The eggs the next morning turned out overcooked but they would do and give her the protein she needed for her busy day of travel.

Segovia sounded good while she wolfed down her eggs. Spanish classical guitar sounded good any time of the day as far as Merry was concerned.

She was thrilled to receive a classical guitar for her tenth birthday. Soon after receiving the guitar, she started on classical lessons. Even flamenco was included. She avidly practiced, mastering all that her instructor taught her. She had become quite advanced and kept up her skills, therefore putting an end to her lessons. Student had become master at classical guitar. Of course, she played without a pick on the guitar she had kept since she was ten. There was only one guitar she played since the guitar had kept it's beautiful tone all these years.

The sky had had beautiful tones of dark purple and bright pink the night before. However the clouds had scudded across the sky at too fast a pace. Merry had wondered the night before, if this wind would still be blowing the next morning.

Fortunately, the next morning, as she ate her eggs and listened to Segovia on the radio, she observed that there was no wind in the birch trees surrounding her home.

What a relief as she backed down her driveway and started her trip to the airport. She knew she would pass a few inexpensive gas stations on her way and saw she would have to stop as her gas light had come on. She felt like she was always filling up her large SUV, the reason she liked inexpensive gas.

Taking off and landing in a commercial jet always interested Merry. That such a heavy object could go at such a fast speed down the runway and then lift off in to the air. Engines were amazing, whether giant like in this jet or tiny, powering small movable models. And landing. Always impressed when the landing was smooth.

She had lost track how many times she had flown. How the look of the natural landscape varied so much world wide. How the look of the natural landscape was similar world wide. The deserts of South Asia and the Middle East look nothing like the watery landscape dotted with islands as you approach Logan International Airport. However, the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest looked like the European Alps.

Miracles in Merry's mind were what her eye observed and if the experience relaxed her, making her content in today's plugged in, fast paced, unforgiving world.

She observed the watery landscape dotted with islands below her and felt the memory of recent deadlines she had met, just slide off her shoulders. She wouldn't feel the stress of deadlines and experience the constant early morning arrival at work any longer. She, for the first time in years, would relish an early start to the day because of a perfect walk in the woods, with a perfect view across the water of the Boston skyline, on a day with perfect weather. She was not a late riser but she definitely was not an early riser. An early walk anywhere she had been in the world that had intrigued her (and places like that had been many), made it more than worth it to get out and about, earlier in the day.

Between O'Hare and Logan, she had observed the back of the head of a man that somehow seemed familiar. Like her, he sat in an aisle seat and diagonally in front her two seats up. What also made him seem familiar was when she saw part of his profile as he turned his head slightly to the side. In addition she could hear him talking to another man and his voice sounded familiar. An accent from one of the towns several miles south of Boston like an accent from one of the towns that contained her place of miracles. And to go along with the familiarity of the region, a dry, witty, facetious sense of humor as he conversed with the other man.

She had bought a one way ticket to Boston. She planned on staying a while, maybe permanently and had packed a large suitcase. At baggage, she saw her suitcase go by. She waited for it to go by, again, but it never did. However, after seeing a suitcase exactly like hers go by and never actually seeing her own, she left baggage. She verified her information with the nearest ticket agent and eventually made her way to the subway. After that, a bus ride to the Comfort Inn. She checked in, inspected the room, found it to her satisfaction, left the hotel and walked to the nearest bakery.

After too many starchy carbs but a good injection of caffeine, she walked back the hotel. Thankfully, in her carry on bag, she had a change of clothes suitable for a walk in the woods on a crisp fall day. She checked her messages and found someone left a message about her suitcase. The woman who left the message stated her husband had picked up Merry's suitcase instead of his own. The woman's last name was that of the man she had seen on her flight to Boston. Merry felt a little awkward but mentioned she grew up with a boy with that same last name and asked the woman what her husbands first name was. Of course, it was quite serendipitous when Merry discovered it was the boy, now grown up, from her neighborhood.

She mentioned to the woman, she hadn't picked up a rental car yet. The woman said she and her husband would meet Merry at Merry's hotel lobby and could drive over right away. Merry couldn't believe the change in her old neighbor's face when she saw him. After all, they were just kids when they saw each other, last. She had only seen a side profile on the plane. Once she saw him for the first time in all these years, face to face, she recognized him immediately.

And he was part of her place of miracles. But as a girl, when she was feeling content and really alive on a crisp winter day, when he showed up, she just felt stress.

Stress? Ice skates were the source of stress.

Merry and her old neighbor and his wife had a good laugh about it in the hotel lobby. Her old neighbor's wife enjoyed in the winter, nothing better, but going out to a flooded marsh in the middle of the woods, by herself, and figure skating, having the whole area to herself. The boys in Merry's neighborhood and the boys that grew up with her neighbor's wife, had a different view of euphoria concerning ice skates. And that was not by yourself and not even with the same style of ice skates. Come to think of it, you didn't even brake the same on hockey skates as you did on figure skates. And you definitely did not do feminine spins and leaps by yourself, rather “rough and tumble” antics with a bunch of your friends against another bunch of your friends in a crazy game of hockey, puck flying!

After the three of them drank a couple of cups of coffee in the lobby, they left the hotel. On their way home, they had offered to drop Merry off at her place of miracles which was not far from their house.

Now, Merry's place of miracles, where she and her big Newfoundland used to go every day except the depths of a blizzard, was a park. A brisk autumn day, a sunny day in winter, a flower carpeted day in spring, or walking by leafy maples on a warm summer day, were all miraculous. The frame of mind one would experience visiting this park. Still, after all these decades, this public park had not changed. Except that the marsh Merry skated by herself on on a sunny winter day had now become a small lake.

She switched off her cell phone and walked down one of the maple lined gravel walkways that led from the entrance of the park to it's interior. After a while, she left the walkway to head towards a small bluff to get her first view of the Boston skyline. The late afternoon sun, on this beautiful autumn day, painted the maples behind her in a warm reddish glow.

She heard pheasants squawking behind her near the maples and that piqued her interest. The male pheasant was truly resplendent and she wanted to get a closer look. She saw him running through the underbrush and what a thrill. She hadn't seen one since she was a girl. And then she got a shock, but in a good way, when she disturbed a covey of quail. To hear a robin singing at the top of his lungs is not quite the same as Segovia, but she'd take that music every day and never tire of it. She heard the robin continue to sing as she left the bluff behind her, crossed a small brook and started to climb. It just couldn't get better when bluebirds flew by at eye level.

Onward and upwards, she climbed, hoping the bench was there and not occupied. She remembered all the times she had climbed this hill to this bench with her Newfoundland. The detachment from her cell phone and everything else electronic and the experience of all this flora and fauna in all this natural beauty was what was miraculous for her along with the view once she got to her bench and sat down.

Spread out below her on this grass covered hill, were red and gold maples far to her right and far to her left. Below the maples and beyond the narrow sea that surrounded the land this hill was on, were peninsulas parallel to the land. Upon the sea, sailboats were rafted together and at anchor for the coming night. They're were two peninsulas. One was to her left and one was to her right. Both peninsulas were draped in green cedar trees interspersed with the red and gold of maple trees. Beyond the peninsula to her left, was the setting sun behind the Boston skyline, casting the sky in a brilliant orange. After, not too much time, as Merry gazed over the peninsula to her right, a strong light swept in a circular motion, that of a lighthouse she knew was perched on a rocky island in the distance. The miracles kept coming, the robin continued to sing.