A Maine Morning

If my mother were here she would delightfully declare, "It's a Maine morning!" That's because this morning in northern Virginia the air is crisp and clean like fine linen. The sun is warm and the light breeze is refreshingly cool with temps hovering in the mid-sixties. The long stretch of record breaking heat and humidity is gone leaving a euphoric, cloudless, sapphire sky absent of any hint of haze.

My mother, a native New Yorker, spent her childhood summers in Maine visiting her mother's family. And it's where I, as a young child, spent at least a week or two each summer visiting my grandmother and great aunts and uncle in Bangor. I loved going there. I have fond memories of exploring my grandmother's house - fascinated by all its charm and peculiarities - including a tiny bathroom tucked away under the stairwell with just room enough for a toilet. A sink where my uncle shaved every morning and washed up for dinner each night was oddly located behind a door off the kitchen. The dining room with its massive, dark furniture seemed gloomy and a bit daunting, but behind it was my grandmother's bedroom. A charming room - immaculate and feminine - smelling sweetly of her perfume. Every once in a while she would invite me in for a friendly, little chat or to show me small trinkets - strings of pearls or lovely brooches.

After my grandfather had died, well before I was born, my grandmother moved back to Maine from New York to live the rest of her life with her two spinster sisters and a brother who had also never married. My Great Uncle Lester was the only one who knew how to drive. On days he wasn't working, we would all pile into his car and off we'd go. We'd head to the rocky coast for a picnic or sometimes just to visit a friend of theirs. I remember my grandmother and great aunts stretching hairnets over their carefully groomed coifs to safeguard them from the blowing wind. Sometimes my mother would drive and we would go to places like Bar Harbor or Booth Bay Harbor. Delightful little towns with quaint shops and cafes.

My favorite trips were the picnics along the shore. There are few places as beautiful as the coastal areas of Maine. One summer, I think I was eight or nine, my parents scooped up my grandmother and drove off to spend a week at a cottage on an inlet on Spruce Head Island. I don't recall many details about the cottage itself, except that it had no heat. My parents slept in the bedroom on the second floor and I vividly remember my father descending the staircase one morning sporting a sweatshirt over his pajamas. It was June and it was freezing at night. I had the luxury of sleeping under an electric blanket with my grandmother in one of the first floor bedrooms. We celebrated her birthday that week and I remember how the light of the full moon waltzed along the surface of the bay. A beautiful, plump birthday moon!

The water was frigid. My brothers and I played along the rocky shore for hours. Sunrise in Maine is very early, so there was no sleeping in. A chorus of sea birds beckoned, "Get up! Get up!" After a quick breakfast we were out the door. The pungent aroma of low tide (somehow both lovely and repugnant) didn't deter our exploring among the huge rocks and digging through the squishy, black mud for clams or any other creature waiting to be discovered.  Down a little way from our cottage was a tiny area of sandy beach. It's where you could actually wade in the water and perhaps stretch out for a swim as the tide was rolling in. You could, that is, if you dared! I dared my brother, Ed and he did! The water in that bay was painfully cold - he was in and out in a flash! We never did swim in the ocean in Maine. I don't think we ever really spent enough time there to build up a tolerance to the water temperature. I do, however, recall spotting a few native, "Mainiacs" (as my parents called them), swimming at the beaches every summer. Brave souls! The cool waters of the Long Island beaches where I was from would probably feel like bath water to them.

Knowing it won't last forever, the dog and I bask in the glory of this beautiful July morning in Virginia. I thank God for the gift of today, for its absolute "scrumptiousness" - and for those long ago days in Maine whose memory fill me with love and dulcitude.