CHAPTER VI : Seasons Change

Time is a weird construct. Looking back, there are stretches of life that seem mathematically impossible. You know years passed because the calendar insists they did, but in your memory they collapse into a single breath. This was the start of one of those seasons. The season of Mitch.

After their wedding, Mitch and Persephonè went on their honeymoon of course. The normal thing people do. Persephonè was fully aware that this was supposed to be a highly exciting event. To start their life together as official husband and wife on a positive note. But it was actually more of a mixed bag of emotions for Persephonè. She was happy to have some time off of work and go to new places, but that was the extent of it. There was this weird air of anxiousness. An uneasy feeling in her stomach. Mitch was so overjoyed though, so she didn't show it. Instead, she matched it. She had this ability to be somewhat of a chameleon with the energy she outwardly projected. She learned to match the energy needed in every situation or room she entered. It was sort of a defense mechanism she didn't even know she developed. Looking back, what really was bothering her, was this realization that her family...and everyone...would know for sure that she was being intimate. She felt like it was a violation of her privacy. It just didn't seem like something to celebrate. But she surrendered to it and buried it along with so many other things, so she could enjoy herself.

There was no crazy destination vacation to a tropical warm beachfront paradise. That wasn't really their fashion... or in their budget. It was a bit more modest. A road trip up north to see some historic sites, a massive garden, and a ferry ride to a small island. The highlight for Persephonè was, by far, the charter fishing though. Perhaps it was nostalgia. In her youth her summers were filled with early morning fishing trips, many with just her mom. That crisp morning air on your skin. The morning dew getting your feet wet because everyone lived in flip flops once summer hit. The sounds of the bird calls that were present no matter what lake you went to. The same smells...kind of like that after rain air...but if the rain was mixed with used minnow bucket water. It was like one foot was in nature and the other was in the bait shop.

Going on the charter boat was different though. Everything was on a larger scale. The boat, the poles, the bait, the lake. Everything. Persephonè felt like she was going out on the open sea, not a lake. How unreal it must feel to fish on the actual ocean she thought. She loved the scene that unfolded as she approached the docks. It was like a marina, but a small scale. More like she was walking into a little fishing village. It was bustling with life as fishermen were getting their boats ready to go out. It was the end of the season so the scene was not in full bloom, but it was easy for her to imagine what that would look and feel like. She felt if she lived here she would be happy. It was such a simple way of life, but so alive.

Out on the water, she didn't even care if she caught anything. She was sitting alone on the top most part of the boat. It was just all so peaceful. Like a moment out of time. Like all the feelings she suppressed disappeared for a brief moment. There was only one other time in her life that she felt peace like that. It was when she was around 12 years old, laying in the shade under a large tree. Looking up at the clouds. Thinking nothing. And it just came over her. Peace. This moment felt slightly different, but very similar. Then the ding of a bell sounded. "Fish on!" and the excitement of catching a fish took over and the moment was gone.

She didn't know it then, but that quiet morning on the water...that moment alone in the wind...would become one of the last memories of such a feeling as peace. She would try to hold onto it, trying not to forget what peace had felt like,,,as though remembering the face of someone she had loved and lost. Every so often, trying to force the memory of the feeling to manifest again to no avail. Moments like those would become so rare that, for a time, she wondered if peace had ever really existed at all.