After a brutal three years working at a job I can only describe as the equivalent of placing my hand in a meat grinder, I took the proverbial leap off a cliff. I quit my job and fell into the abyss of unemployment. This action was precipitated by a call I received from my sister who had just found out that my employer hired an armed guard to protect me at one of my business meetings. She asked one simple question. “What are you doing?”

Our mother died in her 50s of breast cancer, leaving my sister and me with a profound measuring tool for how life should be lived — to the fullest. So I pushed away from the big desk and six figures. I felt liberated the day I gave notice and panicked a day later. I decided to give myself a present and return to my fifth grade summer, so to speak. I would go to Martha’s Vineyard, spend the summer and live by two rules. I would assist anyone who needed help with a project and I would accept all event invitations.

As a salute to my former grade school teacher, Sister Virginia Mary, the following is a snapshot of what I did and what I learned on my summer vacation:

Master artists can be found at the end of a wallpaper knife, a carpenter’s finishing tool or a landscaper’s shovel. I had the opportunity to participate in a house rehab project in Vineyard Haven and watched craftsmen create with their hands things of beauty with deep resonating patterns and lasting landscapes.

Working on a boat is hard and sometimes dangerous, and a fisherman’s swordfish stories and hot cup of lobster bisque in Menemsha after working in the cold and rain is a priceless gift.

Fear of aging is foolish. When I filled in at a clothing store in Edgartown, the owner, who was much older, not only sold the most unique and beautiful clothes, she unpacked boxes, ran stairs and sorted items like a woman half her age.

Sirens do exist. I became good friends with a beautiful woman who was a boat builder by trade, a sculptor by education and baker by trial.

You can hear lectures from renowned experts in small libraries.

If you need something all you have to do is keep looking at the side of the road and it will eventually turn up. Everything from a free bag of charcoal to a solid oak table.

You can write the first 100 pages of a novel.

A stranger can show kindness in many ways through a beach pass given to someone met at an art show, patient, friendly reminders of Island events sent via text, or folding your umbrella while you sleep, unaware that it almost blew down the beach.

I am not related to but share a last name with a large Island family. As a child I had sneaked onto one of their properties to fish and swim, a fact I admitted to two family members at an art opening in Edgartown while drinking a dark and stormy. They laughed and said it was okay because, after all, I was family. A Moore from the same tree only a different branch. Then they added that I could use the beach near their house any time.

An old summer love can make you feel 16 again. And his large dimples, easy smile and kind heart are like a fine wine that ages well with years.

The protection, wonder and comfort of a child’s tree house can be recreated in an upper room of an Oak Bluffs house surround by trees.

Now here I am squarely in August, almost done with my summer and turning my eye to the daunting task of finding a job in a rough economy. I am reminded of a Chinese saying I learned from a fellow lawyer at a firm in New York. Loosely translated, it means: even the best buffets must come to an end. But as I prepare to fold my napkin, push away from the buffet table and walk into the dark fog of a job hunt, the one thing I am sure of is that I am grateful for the opportunity I had to recreate my fifth grade summer. I am thankful for the experiences the Island afforded me and blessed to have met so many wonderful people.