A quite long time ago, after we sold our business, I and my husband decided to make the trip to visit the East Coast, Newfoundland, P.E.I, and Nova Scotia for more than 2 weeks driving our car.

While packing our car, one of our Canadian friends who is a truck driver asked me "Clara where are you driving to?” I told him to West cost. He told me that your husband told me that he is driving to East Coast and why you are going West Coast? I thought that Vancouver was east coast since when we fly to Korea, we have to fly toward Vancouver, so I thought that East, P.E.I, and N.S. are west coast, that was my terrible geography mistake. Now, I know that is the East Coast.

During 2 weeks of driving, we visited a lot of Tim Holton coffee shops and the nice scenery of the hills, fields and beautifully bright-colored small houses, and an open sea area with small parks.

Even though the season was the first week of September, we could not find any restaurants that served lobsters, the reason is now sea side area the water getting warmer, so the fishermen have to go out to the deeper areas to catches the lobster, yet, they do not have the bigger boat to do that, the bigger company who has big boats they are selling all those caught lobster to big cities, like Toronto or Montreal that is the reason.

On the way home we drove around the city of Main, U.S. to try fresh lobster, and when we drove Montreal area we could not read the French, we had a hard time trying to find the right road.

Now, I hope this story is an old one.

A couple of days ago, I finished reading a book called "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood" written by the author Alistair MacLeod was born on July 20, 1936, and passed away the year of 2014. Mostly he wrote short stories and professor at Windsor University, yet, he was born in Cape Breton, East Coast.

To tell you the truth, I am not familiar with Canadian writers, yet, his writing in the book "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood", I could not put down the book, he described the beauty of the East Coast so powerfully and the stories so moving, especially, when he describes working people, like farmers, fishermen, miners, and as well family relationships, and the relationship of the islands to their Celtic past so effectively.

From the beginning of the book, an eleven-year-old boy's feelings about his father who sold their family horse, despite owning long time and has a strong emotional bond with a horse to sell to have easier winter season not feeding the hay to the horse and selling to the guy to let him kill the horse to make mink food.

The horse that smart enough to feel his destiny, so the horse try to not go into the truck, yet when his father coaxes the horse to the truck, the horse listens to his father's wants and goes into the truck, and the truck leaves, the value of selling the horse for only $20.00.

I even myself makes me feel sad about similar farmers surviving the winter, we have been a long way from that kind of hardship.

The writer describes how the weather is more intense with the change from summer to fall, the ocean as angry, and seaweed as self-mutilating that gives me terrifying feelings toward the ocean, yet, when the spring comes the fishermen have to go out to catch the fish to survive another season. Moments, this book reminds me of "The Old Man and The Sea" written by Ernest Hemingway. That might be of man's obsession with his world when the author uses imagery.

Growing up or old is a lifelong process that is inevitable for everyone, most of the time, we are unaware of physical or psychological changes that are happening to us. Ourselves, we look every morning in the mirror, and we do not see the change in ourselves, yet, for a long time, if we had not met our friends, suddenly when we met, we would have been surprised how her looks changed. When we do realize the changes are happening, it is hard for many not to feel overwhelmed or sad about what we lose along the way, now most seniors say every day we have to live our lives happily for the rest of our lives.

I do not believe that is our ultimate solution for getting old. In the book, the grandmother who saw her grandchild once in 10 years, since they lived in the city, visiting their grandmother was not easy, she said to him "Next time when we meet in 10 years, I will be not here." I felt so sad that I looked around myself and what I do about that.

Another night, his grandmother told him that all night his grandmother waited for her husband so long, that her eyes got strained as dawn approached, the individual spruce trees looked like her husband coming home, she opened the door, and only saw a space of silent winter snow. Later she found that her husband on the way home died from falling on the ice.

She was expecting her seventh child and she lost her husband, yet all seven children grew up and helped the family.

And, there are many things wrong with all of us and all our lives, yet, sometimes we can not turn around and fixed.

We have to follow the rules. Especially, in marine areas peoples, if you are the eldest, it is hard to live the way you want to.

Once the young man wanted to study at University, he read many classic books, his situation changed, so he folded his dream to stay at the coast and become a fisherman, but still, he keeps reading books.

I thought that since we immigrated to this country, we lived a hard life making a living and bringing up children, Compared to East Coast people, it was not that hard, someway living city life is easier than remote coast areas. They think England is closer than the city of Toronto.

The first week of December.

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