Memory Monday: My First Home

This week I'm joining Memory Monday over at Retired Not Tired. Each week she provides a writing prompt. (Next week is My First School.) Why not head over and share your memories? 

MY FIRST HOME

(I think I was supposed to blog about my first home as an adult, but I'm going another direction with this writing prompt...)

Oh, my first home...I grew up on an island off the coast of Maine. Not as small as you might think, with over 2400 year round residents and several small towns, it's a unique place to live. What other kind of place can boast having 4? post offices within a span of about 13 by 9 miles? or numerous tiny villages including Clam City?

Photo Credit

I'm often asked how we get onto the island. Did you wonder? We have a suspension bridge build in 1939 that spans from the mainland to a smaller island. This smaller island is connection to a larger island by a causeway which is a road built on a naturally curvy sandbar.

Suspension Bridge

My childhood home is nestled in the mostly evergreen forest at the end of a quaint one-and-half lane road near a hill that used to be peppered with wild blueberries. Through the woods, hidden, is the remains of a granite quarry no longer mined and a small, deep pond. Many discarded, imperfect granite slabs are piled up, making safe homes for small animals. The air is filled with the briny, damp smell of the Atlantic as muted boat engines rev off in the distance and seagulls shriek overhead.

Granite - Photo Credit

It's a fishing village. Livelihoods are dependent on the ocean, lobstering of course, but also clams, scallops, mussels, and, off the coast a bit, other types of fish. My Dad was a lobsterman for most of his life, a physically demanding, uncomfortable job, and one he loved. Other people work in restaurants, small art shops and local businesses, and the school system.

Photo Credit

As a child, my fondest memories are of packing up a simple sandwich lunch with instant iced tea and walking up the "mountain" to pick blueberries with my sister and our Collie Sandy (who loved iced tea). The walk was through the woods onto granite rocks where wild blueberries grew unattended. We would pick blueberries here and there, but mostly explore and have imaginative adventures on sunny days. (Ironically, I wouldn't eat the blueberries we picked. Mostly my Dad would have blueberries and milk or my Mom would make muffins or bread.)

Photo Credit

We also spent many days at the ocean, searching through the rocky beaches for periwinkles and beach glass, swimming in the COLD, salty water, playing with brown seaweed and little crabs, and walking in the pungant mud flats before the tides came in.

The Rocky Coast

Not many kids get to grow up the way I did. As I get older, I realize just how fortunate I was! And no matter where I go, the call of the ocean is always there...