“Have you all gathered your things? “, my mother would holler up the stairs to all of us. “I’m ironing your blouses and shirts. Did you get the extra sneakers from under your beds?”That was my mother’s battle cry for organization as we all collected the toys and books that we wanted to bring to Maine, which took us weeks to prepare for. One by one we cleared our rooms, throwing everything into a big pile in the hallway, before some of it was stuffed into an old Amelia Erhart leather suitcase or brown paper bags, later retrieved by my father and in an organized manner put into the station wagon..

Summer began  the day after school got out so with the car loaded up we would drive “up to Maine” from wherever we were living. After buying a New Hampshire State Sweepstakes ticket at the green toll booths that spanned Route 95 near Rye, we approached the border from New Hampshire, driving over the iron draw bridge in Portsmouth that spanned the two states. If we were lucky we weren’t backed up for hours while a slow moving tug was making its way down the Piscataquis River where the drawbridge lifted its massive carriage, allowing boats and ships to move through.

Once our car tires were over the Maine border it always felt like a thaw loosened my emotions. I was set free. My wonderful, dreamy summers in Maine allowed me to forgive and overlook the chill that made our family life in all the other seasons so inexplicably complex and enigmatic, making our place in Maine the most significant and secure footing in all of our lives.  As the car rolled along into Maine first through Kittery the complex entanglements of my parent’s marriage lifted from our tribe the same way that morning fog lifts, disappearing into vapor as the sun warms the air. Arriving at the lake the doors of the car were thrown open, disgorging us kids as we’d eagerly shake the miles off our small limbs. Everything became clear. We were free and our paths became unrestricted from the debris and detritus that tethered all of us emotionally during the year. Our eight weeks of Maine summer bounty cleared our complex and entangled interior landscapes, allowing all of us to thrive. It felt like an eternity where fresh air and uninterrupted fun was the back drop for the freedom that our parents imparted upon us. Continue reading →

Book One…..“Up to Maine”

Summers

I was always worried about becoming my mother. Then I was freaked out that I might become my father. But what I really worried about was becoming myself. And then I finally came to realize that I’m just fine who I am.  But that’s taken a lifetime to figure out. Also, I never wanted to inherit my parent’s unhappiness and disappointments about life. But I lugged them with me anyway, without even realizing so. That’s how I ended up taking the Scenic Route.

 When I was growing up my family came to Maine every summer. Well, almost every year except when we lived in Texas and Arizona in the late 1950’s. It was just too far for my parents to travel with their young brood that included two active toddlers consisting of myself and my brother.  Also, my overwhelmed mother was shifting between gestating and lactating, eventually adding two more children to the tribe which added more bedlam to it all making a drive to Maine next to impossible.  The terms nuclear family and baby boomer hadn’t been popularized as a defining touchstone for our generation, but all four of us were eventually considered just that. So perfectly American.  Or so it seemed. But a few things were certain about my family: my parents weren’t Ozzie and Harriet, my mother was not Donna Reed and we didn’t take our cues from an episode out of Leave it to Beaver, yet there were many times I craved that we had. I’d also wished we could have been one of the families out of a Norman Rockwell painting, but that could have never happened either because my mother dismissed his work as being kitsch by being too sentimentalized and overly sweet.  And Mum knew everything. Of course, someone could have adopted me, but that never happened either.

Continue reading →