Affirmation

Image by Madeline Pere

I am a former resident of Inverness. I don't like the word 'former' because Inverness has always been a deep part of my Being. There is no other place I have been that so remains. Each time I visit, the chakras of childhood open, and then close again when I leave. When walking the trails I walked with my father 76 years ago and seeing the same old fences still unrepaired in the same old places, I am once again who I was, not the boy on his way to the two-room schoolhouse where Mrs. Mulvaney taught grades I through 4 all at the same time and who moved me from the first-row grade to the third-row grade, setting the foundation for my academic life. I am not he who played with Lee Ward whose father was in World War II, and with Michael Merry whose father owned the mercantile store just up the street from what was to become Vladimir's across from the market whose butcher dressed hunters' kills of deer and sold fresh venison over the counter. I am not he who plucked lettuce for his mother from our victory garden, nor am I he who swung his swing over the blackberry bushes covering the fence in the front yard of the house on Callendar Way just around the corner from the boarded-up hunting lodge that was to become Manka's Inn. I am not the college student who spent many an evening singing Piaf songs with Vladimir under the influence of wine and Becherovka while he danced his solo ballet of chef and baker, waiter, and bartender. I am not the husband and father returning for summer visits and celebrating several New Year's Eve at Manka's. I am not the widower who scattered his wife's ashes at Kelham Beach. I am not the listener to the sea wind sounding Vladimir, Manka, Milan, and Mulvaney. This is not nostalgia and more than memory. How can I long for, while I am here, for what is not gone? | I am person reconfirmed.