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The day I met Fred

“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.” – Ernest Hemingway

By Sarah Ellen HewittPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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It was a spring morning in Riverside Park when Fred changed my life. I always presumed it was him. It had to be.

When the cherry blossoms blanket the sidewalk with candy floss, I always wonder what happened to him.

The day I met Fred

“Hemingway wrote in one of those.”

I turned to the elderly gentleman sat next to me on a wooden bench in Riverside Park. The fifteenth page of my journal was stained with my thoughts. Some scribbled. Some sketched. Some left unsaid.

His eyes met the Hudson river ahead. “I always thought of myself as a Hemingway type. Preferred the Big Apple to Paris. Better coffee.”

His eyes were blue, and his beard a winters evening—silver with specks of snowflake and feathery frost. His tanned skin creased like the pages out of a favourite book. His walking stick was covered with worn travel stickers. Madeira, Florence, Toronto, Oslo, Brussels, Rome and Stockholm. I pictured all of the oceans he’d swam in, the boats he’d sailed and the mountains he’d climbed. The Old Man and the Sea.

I had come to Riverside Park on the 22nd of April 1999 at 7:35am to bid farewell to my life. The daffodils waved in unison with the wind. Spring felt like an odd time for an ending, but the flowers were already saying goodbye.

Rows of cherry blossoms hugged benches and the spring sunrise wrapped her warmth around me–illuminating my skin in hues of crimson and golden-brown. As the sun woke from her sleepy slumber, her silhouette stretched across the river, forming abstract shapes that reminded me of modern art sculptures.

“I have a fond memory of these blossoms.” I said, picking up a petal off the floor. “It was the 3rd of May 1985. My mother brought me here to tell me I was going to have a little bother. I remember being overwhelmed with joy – the kind that makes you dizzy, sick almost. And when the wind blew, it rained candy floss pink and I looked up and thought ‘this tree should be blue for a boy.’”

"I’m Fred.” he smiled and picked up a cherry blossom petal.

“I’m Sophie.” I blew my petal into the spring air.

“I write poetry for my wife. She died seventeen years ago but I still have a million words left unspoken. I can’t just swallow them. What do people do with all of those words? She loved spring. We would sit here for hours breathing it all in.”

“First draft of a novel?” Fred asked, pointing to my secrets.

“Something like that. It’s my memoir - full of the ugly parts of life. Loneliness. Grief. Death.”

Fred scrunched his creased face. “Such tragedy, Shakespeare!”

I embraced my journal “Goodnight, my kitten!”

“Ah, you do know your Hemingway. His famous last words. Death isn’t necessarily ugly; it’s the winter of your life. You blossom in spring and summer, you shed your regrets in autumn and then your hair turns as white as snow, skin as cold as an icicle and you hibernate, forever. You’re still in your summer season, kid. You have time to bloom and mistakes to make before wintertime comes a knocking.”

My winter season arrived a year ago. After the death of my mother and little brother in a car accident, my spring and summer had screeched to a halt. My autumn days shed tears and now winters cold breath whispered death – eager for me to join them.

Fred traced his fingers over his nostalgia “We honeymooned in Rome back in September 1960. They hosted the summer Olympics that year. It was the first games to be full covered by television too. We never attended the games, but the atmosphere was electric. We’d wander the streets with gelato, stealing kisses amidst the crowds and hoping they would film the ecstatic newlyweds on TV when they filmed the streets.”

“I’ve never really travelled. Besides, the coffee is better here.” I smiled.

The blue jays filled the silence with whistled notes. We sat there for a short while, breathing in spring.

He lifted himself off the bench with the help of his voyaged walking stick. “And now I’m off on my next adventure.”

“Don’t forget to buy a sticker.” I laughed.

I sat at the bench alone after Fred disappeared into a cloud of pink petals. As I bid my final farewell, I noticed a small black notebook next to me on the bench. I peered around to see if I could find Fred. I’d hoped he was sat at another bench, writing a love letter to his wife.

He was gone.

The leather on the notebook was cracked. There was a chunk ripped out on the upper left corner. Maybe Fred left it out in the sun too long? Maybe it accompanied him on all of his travels and was home to his memoirs.

I picked it up and flicked through the pages, hoping to find a telephone number or an address I could post it to.

The pages were empty apart from the first two. A haiku poem titled Twenty thousand dollars.

Money is paper

Twenty thousand printed sheets

Turn the page and see

I followed the haiku’s instructions. On the next page, another haiku read.

Fill this notebook with

Stories of life and love and

Death waits patiently

A cheque fell onto my lap with a small note.

Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.” – Ernest Hemingway

friendship
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About the Creator

Sarah Ellen Hewitt

I’m a writer and lover of Sunday mornings with pots of coffee and jazz music. Words are powerful and I hope mine bring you snippets of joy to warm your soul.

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