For two years, I lived in the Brant Rock section of Marshfield, Massachusetts, in a cottage less than 1\/10 of a mile from the beach. I could see the ocean from my front stairs.<\/p>
\nThe cottage had a fireplace and, as it turned out, wood floors, and a sweet little garden in the back.
\nI turned the second bedroom into guest quarters for my grandkids. My grandson Bob used to like to walk on the breakwater. If we didn’t want to swim at Brant Rock, we’d drive a short distance to Green Harbor, which is a gorgeous beach, a fair but doable walk to the famous Duxbury Beach.
\nSometimes I’d get takeout at one of the several very good restaurants in “The Esplanade” or drive to FarFar’s in Duxbury for ice cream or for a visit to their superb library.
\nIt was the stuff of day dreams and wishes, exactly what I’d hoped.
\nUntil the day my across-the-street neighbor stormed to my home in a shrieking rage about some imagined slight that had been reported, inaccurately and with deliberate malevolence, by a meddlesome clerk in the Building Department.
\nThere were other incidents, too, involving neighbors who resented my being there, even though I’d improved the property and even hired them and their friends to do the renovations.
\nI left Marshfield after two years, with not a single name to add to the address book, save one, a lady who tried to start a small business and was similarly driven out.
\nI’ve gone back there once a year, to pick up a calendar at the Brant Rock Fish Market. The folks in the Fish Market are good people, decent and non-judgmental, and their calendars have tons of information, including the tides and the times of sunrise and sunset.
\nI get pleasure in calculating the progressive difference in hours of daylight and, at this time of year especially, when we’ll start seeing later sunsets.
\nLast year, when I went to pick up my calendar, I felt numb, no good memories and no bad.
\nThis year, I was physically ill, sick to my stomach for the whole visit. I couldn’t even bring myself to go to FarFar’s or to the beach.
\nI want to think that this is part of the healing process, like a bad wound that heals from the inside out, sloughing off that which was damaged so that healthy tissue can take its place.
\nI try to tell myself that being an “outsider” is character-building or offers other compensations.
\nBut the reality is that I would have rather belonged somewhere, with people of loyalty and courage who thought it was wrong for one person to have to fight all those battles alone.
\nI believe in karma and that hard times is not so much a punishment but a teacher. It has occurred that in my immediate prior lifetime, I must have had a great deal to learn.
\nSo, next year, in Brant Rock, I hope to be able to measure my slow but steady progression to nirvana<\/i> by being, if not happy, at least a little more enlightened, a little more wise, and a little more at peace with the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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