The North House.

Often a time, my route leads me doing transactions with a old man who lives off the beaten path. Literally, a nearly uninhabited island in which he calls home. Plus this island is full of wild raspberries for picking. In living this way, all his daily living transactions (shopping, food, mail, banking) are done in a fashion where only special vessels can get to his location.

Each time I step foot on his island, I find myself stopped for a day of experience. After all his business is sorted, I pause before I head out and we discuss things. Yet, it isn't so much as discussing, as it is just gibberish... as each one of us hardly understands the other. He speaking a special dialect, the equivalent for Pig Latin. And I in my broken language. Yet we laugh and I seem to always learn something new from him and his stories, if even minute.

Met by his odd gait coming out down the hill, I wondered what today would bring. This eccentric old man in his French painter's hat and long grey hair and beard, a farmer, yet in younger a day I gathered rode motorcycles and was even a soldier at war. Occasionally he tries to sell me odd ball things he has collected over the years. I don't think money means much to him, yet with today's society he needs to have income at his age and his current location.

Today he starts the conversation out in German. No wonder I can't understand half of what he speaks, he mixes and meddles the languages he knows! He spoke of schooling, which he hadn't had much - 5 years. Enough for his time I suppose, reading and writing and arithmetic. But he explained he was fluent in German, Finnish, Romanian, Norwegian, and Romany (very interesting indeed as that implicates his lineage as a Gypsy). Five languages, equally challenging and with very little education as a background. He confessed he was never interested in English, and didn't know anything except a song... Then he started singing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88DIh9vgyr8
(You Are My Sunshine - Flower)

And he was so enthusiastic with the tune even though his English was absolutely horrible, I couldn't resist singing along. So we sat and finished the song. After we were done, we laughed and laughed. At the end of each visit, he gives me chocolate as a gift.

These are moments in life shared with persons who reflect in you.