Audrey Austin

Audrey Austin
Proud to be a small town indie author

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Featured Author this week is Goldie Luckey ......

Goldie Luckey of Roundhill, Nova Scotia, is this week's featured author.




Finding Peace

By Goldie Luckey
 

     The plane is going to leave on time!   Maxine can’t leave this over populated, commercialized city fast enough.  Exiting the office for the last time on Friday was such a welcome relief, no more technical or fundamental analysis, no more worrying about profit realized or economic indicators, she’s officially retired.

     Maxine sits back and thinks about her little blue house overlooking the Atlantic and visualizes long days of working in her garden, listening to the sea gulls and the waves breaking against her beach.  Just as she finally starts to nod off, the fasten your seat belt sign comes on and the pilot makes his landing announcement ending with “...welcome to St. John’s.” 

     She grabs her luggage from the carousel and heads outside to her pick up her rental car.  Before merging onto the Trans Canada she thinks only one hundred miles to paradise.   She only stops once for lunch as the anticipation of starting her new life is more important than the passing vistas.  Tomorrow the movers will arrive with her prized possessions, treasures that she has gathered over her lifetime and favorite furniture items picked from the hoard of decadent items  acquired over three decades spent in Toronto.   A new found friend has left some staple provisions for her, enough to last until she can go grocery shopping, and the previous owner has left a fairly decent barb-e-que. Fish grilled on it and a good night sleep are the sum of her wishes right now.

     The next morning she awakes to the sound of gulls and for a moment thinks she is dreaming.  The clock directly in her line of vision tells her that it was almost nine, she’s slept in.   Better get a move on she thinks, the movers will be here before long. 

     It has been a long day, some of the boxes have been unpacked but most still sit in the middle of the living room, scattered among the pieces of furniture still unplaced.  With a glass of her favorite wine, Maxine cuddles up on in the down filled cushions of her fuchsia lounging chair and protected covered deck watching the ocean waves beating against the rocks.  Rain is in the air, there is a storm brewing somewhere out on the Atlantic.   She can see the lightning flashing in the distance, but still a long way out.   She’s never been afraid of storms, watching them gather momentum has always given her an adrenalin rush.  The lonely sound of a fog horn audibly warns ships of rocks and shoals whenever fog cloaks the lighthouse on the cape.   The wind is picking up and it is getting chilly, Maxine wraps her warm windbreaker around her and waits for the light show.

     She left the high financial rat race of the big city in search of peace and contentment.  The irony of the whole thing is, it was waiting for her right back where she started years ago.  Of course at twenty five Maxine knew it all, small towns were so boring, the people so mundane and she wanted to do much more with her life.  Arriving in the great metropolis of her dreams she felt like a fish out of water, with self proclaimed sophisticated people looking at her like she was an oddity.  “I don’t know you, why are you speaking to me?” was the impression she got.   She turned herself inside out trying to be a big city girl, to no avail.     Now she is sitting there sans makeup, stilettos and all the trappings she’d worked so hard to acquire and she is content.  She now understands that you cannot buy inner peace, it is not a place.  Maxine smiles as she realizes that she is finally where she belongs.

   The moment she walked in the door of her little blue house, with the south facing side garden and white picket fence, she knew that it would be her forever home.  In her garden she will plant the staple foods of her home province, turnips, carrots, parsnips, cabbage and potatoes. The short growing season makes growing more delicate vegetables a near impossible challenge.   Hollyhocks grow in profusion all around her cottage and wildflowers of every color of the rainbow cover her acre of land.  Her closest neighbor is more than a mile away, as is the nearest town. Traffic is almost non existent, unless a bewildered tourist wanders by needing directions to the Trans Canada Highway.   

       Maxine lies back and breathes in the salt sea air while waiting for her storm to start.  The only sounds she hears are the gulls screaming at each other and the waves lulling her to sleep.  
 
Goldie Luckey,
Author from Round Hill, Nova Scotia
I have always expressed myself through writing and have been working on a family history for more than ten years. After retiring and moving to Elliot Lake in 2009 I was fortunate to become a member of the Elliot Lake Writers’ Workshop. My more experienced writer friends encouraged me to write, which resulted in five of my stories being published in the workshops’ anthology ‘Penpourri’. Now living in rural Nova Scotia, I am in the process of writing a series of short stories for a book on The Adventures of Goldie Maxine. This book will chronicle my childhood experiences growing up in Newfoundland.
 
 
 

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