We have arrived in Maine for the weekend, visiting my
Personal Chef’s parents. They live in a
tiny, rural town in what New Englanders call “Mid-Coast Maine.” When I say tiny and rural, I mean there are
still main roads in town that aren’t paved.
There are no cul-de-sacs. There
are no chain stores. Actually, there is
only one store in town. It’s a
convenient store, hardware store, gas station, and lunch counter.
They are 15 minutes north of the Bath Iron Works shipyard
and 20 minutes east of the state capitol, Augusta. Most of the folks around here work for the
shipyard, for LL Bean, or farm.
The family’s little, red ranch house is on the banks of the
Eastern River. It's a tributary of the Kennebec. In the late summer, we
often see moose. In recent years, there
has been an American Bald Eagle’s nest just across the way. In the winter, when the river freezes over,
smelt shacks sprout up for a few months.
Smelt shacks are tiny sheds used to protect ice fishermen from the cold
weather while they work to catch the tiny, sardine-like fish.
Everything here moves in a quiet, determined, timeless
way. For young people, it’s too quiet,
too slow. They cannot wait to finish
high school and leave. My Personal Chef certainly felt that way, migrating
south to Providence for college and never looking back. Until recently. His people have been here since sometime in
the late 1600s. Their roots run deep. His roots run deep. Like generations of men before him, he works
hard on his job, works hard on his home, and works hard on his family. He is most at ease outdoors and among the
wildlife. He has worked in cities—first
Providence, then Boston—for decades, but he is never really at home there.
His parents have gotten old. We don’t come up to visit
nearly often enough, so the changes in them are startling. Each trip now is spent engaged in a series of
chores to help make life a little easier for his folks. Today, despite the 90 degree temperatures, my
husband and sons are out mowing the lawn.
Well, I call it a lawn, but really it’s a three-acre hayfield. On our next trip up, later this summer,
there is talk of painting the house. It
is hard for my husband to see his parents losing a step. Doing some manual labor for them helps soothe
his unsettled bits.
The chores are about done for this trip. The Evil Genius and I have already been down
to the strawberry farm on a reconnaissance mission. We plan on getting up early in the morning to
pick some for him to bring to the beach (he's spending the week with friends on Popham Beach) and for us to bring home. It’s the same farm my Personal Chef worked on
when he was 13, so the Evil Genius thinks it’s pretty cool. And it is.
Since we’re dropping him off for the week, we will
DEFINITELY make it to the beach tomorrow, too.
The only thing that is still in question is whether or not we’ll catch
the Portland Seadogs game tonight or tomorrow afternoon. We’d all like to, but this trip is really
about being with the FabFam. It’s a
blessing that my children know their grandparents. Indeed.
Monday evening prologue: So, you already know that we didn't make it strawberry picking or to the Seadogs game. We did make it to Popham Beach, but only to drop our youngest son off with our friends in the wee hours of the morning before heading to the hospital with his brother. He hadn't yet slept and was weepy. It broke my heart. To get a call last night that he was having a marvelous time playing in the surf and running around the old Fort Popham went a long way to easing my mind. I just heard that today they hiked the rocks and spent more time on the beach. We're a resilient bunch with a terrific support system.
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