Keeping time
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| McCloon's Lobstah Shack / Spruce Head Island, ME |
The first thing you notice is the smell of the ocean everywhere. It's also the first thing to disappear. By Day 2, I realize I can't smell it anymore unless I have my nose in a tide pool, hand swirling through the rotting detritus. The beach is flat and sandy at low tide, perhaps a 1/4 mile sand to shore line and 2 miles long. You can comb it for shells and explore the seaweed covered rocks. Swirl a toe in a tide pool and what looked like a of mush of algae and seaweed jumps to life--hermit crabs on the move, like the streets of NYC. Seaweed and sea grass grow right out of the rocks--the rocks! How this is possible I couldn't at first figure out. Where does it root? On closer look we find it's growing out of tiny barnacles attached to the rock--life clinging to life.
At high tide the beach disappears. Entirely. At first the transformation is gradual. You notice the tide pool you're exploring, the one you traveled to by land, is suddenly an island. You will have to wade knee deep to find your towel gain. It seems to stay this way for a while, dry land swallowed by sea one slow inch at a time. And then. It's minutes and you can watch the tide pull in from three directions, see it swallow the beach in great hungry gulps. Now the beach is a island you must dessert lest it swallow you, too. You go home and when you return two hours later, the water has subsumed the entire coastline. There is only the curve of the road now, with a menagerie of wildflowers at its edge, and a narrow border of rocks. You'd need a paddle board to navigate Drift Inn Beach. If you're a newcomer at high tide, you might drive right by it. "Where's the beach that map is showing?" you'd ask and keep on driving.
It's possible to sit on the high rocks of Drift Inn beach and listen to both river and sea at the same time. At tide's ebb, rivulets of the St. George River trickle under the road, over and between the rocks, down the beach and into the Atlantic. I want to sample the running water, see if it is fresh or salt or some strange potion of both.
There are so many varieties of wildflowers here. Purple, pink and sometimes white lupine grow like Dandelion in every untended patch. Butterflies flit among it all, even on the beach. In a one-week stay we see sea life and forest life--sea gulls and turkeys, hermit crabs and butterflies.
The clanging of a bell is at all times heard in every port. The buoys out at sea warn sailors of dry ground and the bell inside the buoy warns in case of fog--in case eyes fail. But there have still been many deaths at sea. Lobstering is not for the faint of heart.
A drive to explore the larger area yields great rewards, every bend in the road seems to hold a view of the ocean to take your breath away. Tall, stately pines dot the land and reach to the shore, only to give way to rocks draped in thick, dark ropes of seaweed that crackle and pop under your feet. Sea cliffs and rocky coast drop into blue-gray waters. The ocean is calm here, scattered with private islands that have been in families for generations. In the morning, we cross a small bridge. It is low tide and the river runs steady to the sea, forming rapids that flow fast and strong. Travel over the same bridge that same afternoon and now the ocean pushes back against the river's current with enough force to change the direction of water flow. The sea pushes into the river, pushes back all that fresh water, mingling it with brine.
In the evening, fighting the mosquitoes as large as a thumb nail, we launch out in search of fresh seafood. We follow signs to McCloon's Lobstah Shack. How we find it I have no idea. The signs lead us up Route 131 to Route 73, then down a narrow side road that curves to the coastline. We spot a sea hawk nesting atop an old ship's mast. We ease the minivan over a small bridge, around a few bends, and boom! Here you are--lobster shack with a view to steal your breath away. It turns out this view is photographed and printed in a book. Find an Adirondack chair and wait for your lobster dinner. The waitress will hoist by pulley and crane the crate that waits in the frigid waters below the dock. It's full of the day's catch. Select your dinner live and she will return with it, now orange-red and still, perched demurely on your paper plate with a white bun and melted butter, ready to be cracked open and sucked dry of its tender meat.
We live a whole week of this watery, rocky world (thanks to our sweet friends who gave us the use of their summer cottage). It's hard to quiet yourself at first in the way this place is quiet, and so you don't know what to do with yourself at first. There are plenty of things to do and see but your insides run amok for lack of being conventionally productive. But we quickly adjust to the lack of motor traffic, the sound of the ocean, and mornings that stretch into afternoons of exploring. A walk to town for pizza at the general store, nothing to hurry back for, so stop and take a look in a gallery or wander to the edge of the boat launch and peer into the waiting water. A ride in an old model T at the transportation museum, then let the kids wander through the gift shop for as long as they please. No appointments or deadlines to meet. Roast marshmallows over a fire while light fades. Bedtime can wait a few minutes more. Linger over breakfast at the picnic table. Clean up at the end of the day instead of three times a day. Play wiffle ball and fly balsa wood airplanes and tend hermit crabs in a bucket. Walk the beach twice in one day. Let the kids get dirty as they please. Soon slow and nothing to do becomes peaceful and sweet. We could stay here all summer we remark. But we are also eager to return home and pick up our lives again--therapy and lessons and projects and the puppy who was left behind for this trip. They all pull us towards home like the gravity that pulls the tides in and out.
And now here we are, living summer at home, tending to small projects around the house, taxiing kids to birthday parties and play dates and appointments, and we feel summer's rush, the hours and days slipping between our fingers. It's so precious and so fleeting. But we pick peas from the garden (three weeks late) and take trips to the local farm to pick up our weekly CSA share and check on the growing piglets. We sort through our finds on the counter, trying to imagine what we might do with so many peas, cabbage, greens, turnips, broccoli rabe--some of which we've never sampled. We plan trips to NH and NY and Ontario and MI and talk about what fall will bring. It's all good. And it's lovely to wake up each morning and hear the pound of little feet on the floors attached to growing bodies that will zoom into the kitchen to ask, "What's for breakfast? What should we do today?" all in the same breath. We try to remember the rhythm we kept in Maine, try to move slowly enough to notice the gift of a day under warm, blue skies.
In news on the home front...
I discovered this evening that the top of E's head reaches the middle of my rib cage. The faster she grows the faster her appetite for...books. She's drinking chapter books like cups of lemonade on a hot day. We have to tell her to go outside and play. She also has new interest in her hair: it's long and wavy blond if you haven't seen her in a while, and she takes great pride in it. She's growing it out until it's as long as her babysitter Amelia's, our friend Elizabeth's, and Princess Elsa's. On Sunday, she brought me her paperback version of Frozen and asked me to fix her hair like that. "Like that" was Princess Elsa's loose and wavy braid. I assured her I could braid her hair in that same low style, but that it would not look like Elsa's. "It's a cartoon, sweetie. Cartoon hair isn't real." I said all of this remembering the hair craze that Disney's Belle created in the 90s--the swept back half bun--and how I used to practice it in the mirror over and over.
A has lost two teeth since spring and gives us daily updates on how many more are wiggly. Her love of the animal kingdom persists--on vacation she adopted multiple hermit crabs to take care of. I asked her one day if she was sad to set her pal Shermy free. Her quick reply with head cocked to the side: "Well, you know, Mom...there are other Shermys in the world." How silly of me. Of course. And many of them tagged along with us on vacation adventures. She, too, continues to shoot up to the sky, all legs and arms and big brown eyes. She assures us she is well ready for Kindergarten, having spent the spring practicing getting ready for the day faster than E could. If you know me and/or you know E, this was an easy victory intended to show us as much as prove to herself that she can do this Kindergarten thing. She's got it down. Mature as she's grown, A is still full of quirky contradictions--she'll pick up the whole house for you free-of-charge, but ask her to use the toilet before you go out for an afternoon, and she throws a fit to beat the band.
K jumped for the first time in the grocery store yesterday and you should have seen the ridiculous party we threw in the cold case aisle next to the orange juice. Literally. A mama, two girls, and a boy all jumping around their shopping cart cheering that boy on, because he can jump. And we weren't letting that moment pass us by. No matter where we were. The fact that his sisters were the first to notice and to start their own cheering section for him in the store was one of those sweet sweet moments of motherhood. So much love packed into those itty bitty hops and the big time hurrahs that followed. I nearly had to sweep a tear away. K has also started a new therapy this summer. Hippotherapy is physical therapy and occupational therapy on horseback. K rides a steady old pony named Abe, whom he gleefully commands to "Dop!" and "Doh!" and whom he rides frontwards, backwards, and sideways while working on core muscle strength, balance, and endurance. He enjoys it thoroughly and his therapist and helpers seem to thoroughly enjoy him. We've also noticed an improvement in appetite, sleep, and speech on the days he rides--all three of which the therapist told us to expect.
Our puppy pal Bodie celebrated his first birthday on June 20. He has become a calm and loyal friend to our little brood. He wants nothing more than to be near people or other dogs, and he is just as content to laze a hot July day away as he is to fetch ball after ball on a cooler one. The poor thing is as timid as they come--afraid of doors, baby gates, baths, and anything that has wheels. But after a long fall and winter of training and retraining, we're enjoying him more and more.