The beginning

Born a coal miner’s daughter.... not exactly. I was born a hippy’s daughter in the early 70’s. Two young adults finding their way through times of experimentation and growth, both desiring to expand, but going about it in different ways. The beginning may have been the same. How cool was it to get high and then stand on your head and do yoga? 

Living in a yogic ashram, the energy at the time was high in every way so I am told. Enticing and frightening in some way to my mother. Addicting, another drug, to my father. I see now that it was experience hunting. For my mother it was the beginning of a lifelong journey. For my father it was a high, not the first and certainly not to be the last. I am not clear on why we left after a year or so. I believe it was so that we (my brother and I) would have options for our spirituality and not have it laid out for us. Truthfully I think my mother was running. It was so right, maybe too right. So away we went. Goodbye to the ashram in Pennsylvania and hello to downtown Wilmington, Delaware. It was quite a shift really. I was two or three during this time so my memories are only stories.

 

The stories in my head are beautiful. I remember pictures of my mom with her hair flowing, playing the harmonium and both of us in our nightgowns chanting. Pictures of me with my prayer bead strung pacifier with my eccentric Nana in the background. My Nana lived with us on the third floor of the big inner-city house. I have vague memories of a large porch. City houses with porches have since occupied a special place in my heart. Most of the stories of this time that fill my head are humorous ones about my Nana. Maybe that is because the marriage between my mother and father was unraveling. He was to continue his role as a hippy living in his reality. My mother was discovering that she couldn’t live with the ashram nor could she live without it. It was too hard to be in the middle. She had to face her fears or run again. She ran. 

 

This time she ran to Elliott’s Island. It was the remote island my ancestors on my Mom’s side were from. Mom wanted to get away from everyone and everything, so running to an island seemed to be the perfect solution. The tagalongs on this move in addition to my brother and I were her jackass boyfriend Dick and sometimes his young son Robin who lived with a major heart condition. We all took up residence in this bizarre remote land in one of the two overgrown shack-like properties our family still owned. 

A former reverend on the island once described it perfectly by saying, "God shook the world and all the loose nuts fell to Elliott's Island.” From an ashram, to a city, to an island in just a few years was quite the roller coaster ride. It is amazing what we humans will do in search of happiness or running from our demons.