Most likely you followed the link from my first page or the seventh page of Random Thoughts stories. Here are some more, and I hope these are just as amusing and thought provoking. And, as always, your comments are appreciated.
My mother died on March 17, 1992 at 4:30 in the morning. She was 66 years old. I knew when she died, because that's when I woke up. It was as though her spirit was calling to me. She had been slowly dying since her second major stroke, 3 weeks earlier. The nursing home waited until 6:30 am to phone me with the news. According to her wishes, she was cremated.
It was then up to me, to spread her ashes, or cremains, as the man at the crematorium called them, in a body of water. There was no funeral, as no one would have attended.
My mother spent the last year of her life in a nursing home. She had moved to Minneapolis two years before that, to be near me. Had I been more observant and less occupied with my life, I might have realized how ill she really was earlier. My mother was never neat, so it was no surprise her apartment was a total disaster. When I took her to the grocery store, she forgot what she went there to buy. I got irritated, instead of concerned.
Finally, I made her see a doctor, but it wasn't enough. She apparently had been suffering small strokes for a while, and she had another one while driving. She hit a car, and ended up in the hospital. It was then I realized how confused and ill she really was. She needed constant care, and I had to place her in a nursing home. I honestly believe she was happy there. She was surrounded by people, and she still had some of her outgoing personality. She had spent the last 20 years alone, once I had left for college. But I think she felt alone since my father died in 1957.
My mother tried to do the very best for me and my brother. We had many things she couldn't afford to give us. She let me take skiing lessons when I was 13 and 14. I had a lot of skirts and sweaters for school. I got my own phone when I was 15, though that was probably out of necessity. I wasn't able to return the kind of love my mother wanted, which I felt was always too suffocating.
My mother had dreams which were never fulfilled. She had always wanted to go to college, but my grandparents didn't see the need. She loved to travel, but her only international travels were to Sault Ste. Marie, Canada, and to Juarez and Tiajuana, Mexico. She kept the same car until it practically fell apart. She didn't spend money on herself, because she really didn't have it.
There was great loss and sadness in her life. Her son got polio and a few years later her husband died. She never remarried. She took care of my brother without complaining. She moved us across America to California for my brother's health. She left behind most of her family and friends. She sold our house and we lived in an apartment. My mother laughed a lot when she really wanted to cry. She did a lot of crying, too.
After I picked up her remains, I put them in the garage. I was waiting for the right moment and the right place to distribute them. At first, I thought I would spread them at the very top of Minnehaha Falls. She could go freefalling, then to the Mississippi River, and finally out to the ocean. I thought her birthday would be appropriate, but when it came around, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I felt guilt at not being able to give my mother the love she so wanted. I wasn't ready to say goodbye. The following year, it was the same thing. And the year after. Then I decided the Falls were not good enough, and I considered taking her with me to Australia. In the end, I didn't, because I feared going through Customs and trying to explain it.
This year, I left my house and my old life and moved east. I took my mother with me, occasionally talking to her as we drove. Once I found my apartment, I knew I was ready to set her free. I took the box holding her remains and looked for a suitable spot to put her. Off the East Prom, there was a boat dock. On one side was Casco Bay, the other side probably wasn't the ocean, but it went directly into it. I took the plastic bag, opened it, and poured the white substance into the water. It stayed on top and floated off into sea. I didn't cry, which surprised me. To remember the day, I took two rocks and kept the end of the box, which had her name and date of death on it. I added the day I let her go, August 28, 1997, and am keeping it as a memorial to her. Maybe now she is finally free and off on the adventures that eluded her during her lifetime.
©14 September, 1997Downtown Portland has disappeared. So has the end of my block. The air is so foggy today, you can barely see 50 feet ahead of you. The world is covered in a grey, wet mist, that conceals the crisp outline of buildings and trees. The fog sunk into the bay, as if the bay had been swallowed up. There is something mysterious and sensual about fog. Earlier this morning the fog was so thick, but now it is lightening up a bit. At least from where I sit.
Driving was dangerous this morning. There are always a few idiots who refuse to put on their headlights, even though you cannot possibly see their car. Yet they have to speed past you, like they owned the road. Several of the women were late to class this morning, because of the fog. Many of them live in rural areas, and having explored some of those roads, I know you have to proceed cautiously. It shows their determination to move forward in their lives that they managed to drive into town on a day I am sure they would have preferred to stay at home.
When I lived in the San Francisco Bay area, I got used to the fog. But because of music, I always think of London and fog. There was some fog in Minneapolis, too, rising from the water on bitter cold days. This fog today is nothing like that. It is definitely from the ocean, and bringing in the unique ocean smell with it. It is thick and heavy and full of dampness that gets into your soul. I need some hot soup or hot chocolate to take the chill off, yet I am treating myself to an ice cream cone at 31 Flavors this afternoon. Perhaps the warmth of cocoa will be needed later tonight, when I won't be able to see the fog, though I know it will still be here.
Many authors have written about the fog, also. The fog has been written about by such writes as t.s.eliot, Agatha Christie, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Poets also use fog to convey a picture with words. Wadsworth wrote, "Wan, dull, and glaring, with a dripping fog" and Browning said. "Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat". Even ex-President George Bush used fog in his inauguration speech. It has a quality that can express so many different things, that it can be used in so many ways. The expression, "I haven't the foggiest notion", meaning you have no idea because everything is clouded. The first poetic line that came to my mind was from Carl Sandburg.
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
The fog will lift eventually. The sun will burn through the layers of the dense, damp clouds, and the sky will be be blue again. Or perhaps the wind will reverse it's direction, and blow it back on to the ocean. I feel my life has been buried in fog, a state of mind that has been clouding my thinking and actions. I can finally feel the sun breaking through and the fog lifting from around me. I am awakening from a dreamlike state, and into consciousness. I am ready to face the sun and the day, at long last. Just as I am looking forward to downtown Portland emerging from it's unwelcome blanket of fog to show it's skyline, I am looking forward to my true self to come forward.
One more Sandburg poem about fog.... i couldn't resist. I think it fits too.
LOSTDesolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast
And the harbor's eyes.
This is my first autumn in New England. Technically, it is not yet autumn. It will start in about a week. It is also my favorite season. Mostly because of the leaves. But there are other aspects of autumn I like. The crisp air. Wearing sweaters. Halloween. Hot chocolate to take off the chill. But mostly, it's the leaves.
Driving through Maine down to New Hampshire and then to Massachusetts this past weekend, you could sense a change in the air. Here and there, were hints of color other than green. A dash of yellow. A touch of orange. A spot of red. In the next few weeks, the colors will explode in a fiery display of brilliance and intensity. A drive in the country will become a picture of incredible beauty, which man can only attempt to copy.
The best part is walking in the leaves. After they change their colors, and turn brown, they lose moisture and become brittle. So when you walk on them, they crunch. They crackle. You can shuffle your feet through a leaf strewn path and make your own music. I enjoy kicking the leaves as I walk down a street or a lane in the country. It makes me feel young again.
In the old days, when I was a child, people could burn leaves, and the smell would permeate the neighborhood, and kids would gather to watch the leaves turn to nothing. Now it is a chore to bag your leaves for the trashman to collect, with nothing to excite your senses. And we used to jump in the piles of leaves. Push your friend into them. Bits of leaf would get under your clothes and scratch your skin. Your hair would be decorated with the same.
While autumn lasts 3 months by the calendar, the time the leaves are at their best is short. Perhaps a week. Then the colors fade into brown, the leaves fall from the trees and the bare branches are all that you see. Like all things in life, one should make the most of this season. Stop and take the time to admire nature's spectacular panorama while you can. Like a kaleidoscope, the picture is constantly changing and always worth the look.
©15 September, 1997Ok. I know he's controversial. No one admits they watch him, but I will. I never miss his show if at all possible. He is a decent talk show host, as far as they go, but it is the people he has on the show that make it the outrageous program it is. Where is there any better entertainment on television? Any truer, rawer human emotion? Right now, it's on, and I am once again constantly amazed at the subject matter. There is this girl, who thinks it is perfectly ok to have slept with her half brother. And she's pregnant by him, but now she is in love with the older brother, who is not biologically related to this girl. I swear this is true. Even in my wildest imagination, I don't think I could have made this up.
I first started watching this show when I moved here. He was on in the middle of the afternoon, and the very first show I saw, was with a man who had cut off his own penis with a gardening shears. He then flushed it down the toilet. No, not the shears. All because of another man who was bothering him, and had for the past 5 years. Jerry brought this other man out, and to put it bluntly, he was as obviously gay as he could be. His dress, his manner screamed out his sexual orientation. If there had been any doubt of which way he went, it became totally apparent when he opened his mouth. He might have been acting, but he was as stereotypical a gay as I had ever seen. I never laughed so hard in my life. That show got me hooked.
I have since seen on the show, men who dressed like women and wanted to tell the men they were dating what they really were. I've seen women with breasts so surgically enlarged they made basketballs seem small. I seen women tell the men they were about to marry in a few days, that they were bisexual. I seen prostitutes confront their pimps, and pimps fight over their girls. Teenaged girls who want to be strippers, prostitutes and are drug addicts. The show about adult babies was enlightening. He was very sensitive to the woman who weighed 1,600 pounds. He likes having the KKK on, so he can make fun of their beliefs. Then there was the man who dressed and acted like a woman who got his girlfriend pregnant. Well, I could go on, but why bother. I think you get the idea.
I've seen more fights, heard more bleeping out swear words and learned more ghetto talk than I most likely will ever need. I've seen women slap other women, rip out each other's hair, and wrestle over the sorriest looking man who is playing the two of them for fools. Sometimes they throw shoes, chairs or bouquets of flowers. Jerry has his own security guards, who's sole purpose is to break up the fights. I think they are crazy to get in between some of these people. Unless it's the topless women they are trying to separate, then I can see why they would like their jobs.
Now there is some backlash over his program. A station in Chicago has pulled it off, and I saw on my local news they are thinking about doing the same here. I have a problem with this, as it goes against my first amendment rights. No one is making me watch Springer. I have chosen to spend an hour a day with him and his guests. If I don't care to watch it one day, I can choose to watch something else. But don't take away my choices. I am mature enough to decide what is right for me, and what I don't have any interest in watching. I've never seen E.R. or any of those police shows. So leave me Jerry Springer, and let me have my fun, and I won't complain about the shows anyone else watches.
© 23 April, 1998One month ago, I left Minneapolis. It was a long time coming, but I had to wait for certain legal papers to be drawn up and signed. I headed east, and ended up in Portland, Maine. That was my destination, but I almost stopped and stayed in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. And I almost left Portland twice, once when I couldn't find an apartment, and once when I had planned on ending my life. I did actually leave Portland, and got as far as Utica, New York. There were many tearfull phone calls made along the way, but what changed my mind was a toll booth worker who told me to buckle up my seat belt. His words, which he probably told to everyone, made me decide to go on living. It made believe someone cared about me, even if it was a stranger.
I went back to Portland the next day, determined to make a new life for myself. I haven't done that great, but I have made some progress. I am going to a weekly divorce support group, which helps me see I am not the only one going through these sorts of emotions. It's something I actually look forward to each week. I have also been looking and applying for a job. It's hard, when you haven't worked for money in eighteen years and have no real skills. But I will keep looking and eventually find a job.
It's the little day to day things that I feel I am handling better. When I went to register my car and get my driver's license, I handled that, and all the related paperwork. And when I finally left the DMV, and found my brand new car had a flat tire, I didn't cry and took care of getting it changed and repaired on my own. A small yet significant victory. That's the kind of thing I would have called on my husband to take care of, and he would have. I also took care of getting the unassembled table I had bought up the stairs. Boxed, it was too heavy for one person to push, lift or carry alone. So I opend the box downstairs, and carried it up, piece by piece. And I had no trouble assembling it, either, though that is something I have done before.
I am slowly getting used to the quiet. There are no children fighting, except those outside, and they aren't mine. No voices begging me to drive them to a friend's house or to the mall. I don't even turn on the tv or play a cd all the time. I am beginning to like the quiet. And I am getting used to eating what I want when I want. No more preparing a meal for 5 people every night, to be on the table at exactly 5:30 pm. If I feel like soup or just a sandwich or even a bowl of ice cream, then that is what I eat. I may eat it at 5 or at 7 pm. No one but me cares when I eat.
I've only been on my own for a month, and I think I am doing better than I expected. I'm getting used to having the covers on me, and no one kicking me in my sleep. If the phone rings, I know it is for me. I take the garbage out and change the cat litter myself. The amount of laundry is nothing compared to before. What channel the tv is on is my choice, and no one channel surfs all night long anymore. I never have to look for anything, because no one moved it while they were looking for something else. I can leave the dishes for a day or two, and no one gets angry. I go to bed when I want and don't have to wake up with an alarm clock to make certain the kids get off to school.
I hate living alone.
In one month, it will be my 25th wedding anniversary. There will be no party, no one celebrating. I would love to just sleep though the day, but I know I can't. The day will be spent alone, in a city 1400 miles from my husband and children. It is on a Monday, and he will go off to work, and maybe think about it. But he won't dwell on the past and how he stopped loving me. And hopefully, neither will I. But I wouldn't bet on it.
©24 September, 1997I have lived here now 3 months, and it is starting to be familiar to me. I am getting used to the way the weather changes and the local television stations and the grocery stores and I don't get lost nearly as often as I used to. The accent doesn't sound as funny to me as it did in the beginning. It has become a safe place for me, where I have become stronger and gotten to know myself, in a way I never did before.
I like the area where I live. It's in town, lots of old houses, mostly converted into apartments. I can see the Casco bay from my windows, and hear the ships at night. There is a big bread bakery about 2 blocks away, and the smell of fresh baked bread often overtakes me when I leave or return to my apartment. There are a lot of places I can walk to, including the library, the historic old port area and the bay. Driving is easy here, too, since Portland is such a small town. Relatively speaking. I can get just about anywhere in under 5 minutes.
Most people still think of Oregon, when you say you live in Portland. Even though this was was established a good hundred years before the other one. At least by Europeans. There are buildings here older than the other Portland. More history and charm. There are still brick streets and sidewalks in parts of town. I haven't been in the other Portland in over twenty years, but I'm sure the two cities are nothing alike. Where the other Portland is home to Nike and the Trailblazers, we have the B&M Baked Beans factory and the AHL Pirates.
The one thing everyone I have met has asked me, is why did I move here? I wish I had an answer to that question. I don't know why. I wanted to move east, since I had spent half my life in California and half in the midwest. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I should be in Raleigh, North Carolina now, halfway through a paralegal course. That wasn't meant to be, so other plans had to be made. My original list of places to go had been cut down to one, and what was left was Maine. I ruled out Ann Arbor earlier, after I had gone there for a conference. I drove out here, full of hope and enthusiasm. REady to start my new life, whatever it would be. Getting an apartment was a challenge, with no job, new to town and no verifiable income. Luckily I found nice landlords who trusted my ability to pay the rent.
I have had some bad luck here. Not finding a job. Ok, so I haven't tried too hard. But I have tried, and not been successful. I am certainly qualified to answer phones, but I didn't get that job. And getting rear ended in my new car, on a beautiful Saturday out in the country. Being without a car was a challenge, but I managed to cope and get everything done I needed to do. I still haven't met too many people, but where am I going to meet anyone? My social life consists of my weekly divorce support group. On occasion I have gone to an Al Anon meeting. My phone never rings, unless it's a sales person or a wrong number. I am waiting to start a program to help displaced homemakers get into the work force. This will start in February.
So why am I thinking about moving already? Winter. I think there has been over 18 inches of snow here already. And it's not even December yet. I don't think I will experience the bone chilling cold there was in Minnesota, but why should I have to be cold at all? I'm starting to get old, and want a warmer climate. One where I can fish year round. But one that still has 4 distinctive seasons. Right now I am looking at the Blue Ridge Mountain area of Virginia. I plan on driving down there in January, and doing some exploring. I'm just still thinking about it, because who knows, I may decide I like it here more by late spring, when I would be moving. No matter what, I will always have a special place in my heart for Portland, a place I came to searching for myself and think I have found me. At least, I've started this process of getting to like and know myself and it all began here. In Portland, Maine. The first place I ever lived alone.
©29 November, 1997The topic of last night's divorce support group was dealing with the stress holiday's can bring. I haven't cared for holidays for a long time, and as in all other parts of my life I try to avoid stress over them. When Evelyn was first born, we had Thanksgiving out, at Becky's Cafeteria. At that time it was just south of Franklin on Hennepin. Last time I was in Minneapolis, a trendy restaurant called Lowry's had just closed in that same location. She was about 6 weeks old, and we decided to make things easier and go out. That is a tradition I insisted we continue over the years. We were never near family, so it was just us. First 3, then 4 and finally 5 people. All who like different things. I don't like pumpkin pie or sweet potatoes and he does. Evelyn and I love stuffing, and the boys don't. Greg loves cranberries. If you go out, especially to a buffet, everyone can get what they like. The only drawback is there are no leftovers. And since I love turkey, that's a big drawback.
I don't get too worked up about the holidays. Over the last few years, I have convinced the kids it made more sense to give to charities we believed in, rather than spending money buying things for ourselves. When they would complain, I would ask them well, what do you want? Nothing. What do you need? Nothing. Since they went with me to the Boys and Girls Club and to see our families when Evelyn and I were Care Partners, it wasn't too hard to convince them they really didn't need more stuff. Last Christmas, he took the kids to California to see their grandmother. I wasn't invited, and I wouldn't have gone even if I had been asked. So I had a taste of what it would be like, being alone over the holiday. It doesn't bother me, except that there is nothing to do.
The woman who spoke to our group was a nurse and a mental health expert. She gave us a list of ways to reduce stress, and elaborated on a few of them. Exercise, get lots of sleep, eat right, stuff like that. She gave is cards that had those temperature sensitive squares on it, kind of like mood rings. They are supposed to measure your level of stress. When we all got them, as she was talking, everyone was playing with them. I didn't think I was stressed, but I kept getting black. I looked at the woman sitting next to me, and she let me use hers, and it was still black. She tried mine, and it was green, which is normal, proving to me that mine wasn't defective. Even after she had us all go through some breathing exercises to help us relax, I was still black. But I didn't feel stressed.
I am not looking forward to going to Minneapolis in 2 weeks. I know this will be stressful on everyone. The kids, who haven't seen me in over 3 months. And my future former husband who probably isn't happy that I'm going to be staying there. And me, who would love never to have to go back there ever, much less in November. To make matters worse, I have to stay longer than I originally planned, as we have a court date on December 2. But I am going to remain calm and positive. I will reaffirm myself like I do now, repeating certain phrases over and over again. I'll get a chance to go through my things and get some stuff shipped out here. Like dishes. My duck shoes. My other pairs of glasses. Some books on photoshop. I'll try to avoid him as much as possible, while being with the kids as much as possible. Try to avoid the stress of being there, where I'm not really welcome.
I used to have one of these cards that measured stress next to my computer before I moved. It's packed somewhere, so I am glad I have a new one. It's kind of fun to see how stressed you are. I feel calm now, but I just tried it, and it's black again. I guess I don't realize when I'm stressed, or everything bothers me. Either that, or it's because my hands are always cold. Since they are regulated by body temeperatur, that must be the reason. Because I feel totally peaceful and relaxed. Yeah, I probably got a defective one.
©6 November, 1997I left Maine in the end of July of 1998. I don't remember much about that day, except that I left there pretty much the same way I arrived, approximately one year earlier. Some of my belongings in my car, including my cat, and alone. The day before I left, the movers had come to take my meager belongings with them, and I stayed in the empty apartment that last night with the windows open to the sea and with no television, no computer and just a sort of chair bed and my cat. I had lived in Portland, on the East Prom, and because of my experiences there, I was moving to North Carolina. Sometimes, I wish I had stayed in Portland. I loved where I was, and I was beginning to like the person I was becoming.
I didn't know what to expect as my daughter and I drove into Maine yesterday. The road from Northampton, Massachusetts to Maine was vaguely familiar. I'd taken most of that route the very first time I drove into Maine. The first time I drove out of Maine was the time I was going to end my life, just having been in Maine two days. There were many other occasions I'd driven that route, in both directions. I'd taken 295 to 95 to 290 to 90 when I left Maine. Only one time had I driven that route with one of my children, and that was when Greg and I went to North Carolina to find a place for me to live.
Evelyn let me drive after lunch in Littleton, Mass. We'd stopped at a local place called Ken's and it was quite good. She drifted in and out of sleep, leaving me to my thoughts. The tears started falling, almost on their own. Memories flooded into my brain. Some good, some bad. Evelyn woke up long enough to tell me crying was not allowed then fell back asleep. I couldn't quite stop that easily, but by the time we got off the turnpike, I was done. For the moment.
I remembered driving there the very first time, not having a clue what I was doing, what I was going to, what was to become of me. I had never lived alone, I wasn't divorced, I had no skills to find a job. I was scared, insecure and very unsure. From the motel I was staying at, I called several apartments about renting them, and two people agreeed to see me and both offered me the apartment. I took the duplex with the staircase that led up to nowhere. It was two bedrooms, a bath, kitchen and living room. They also had a bed they sold me, and they let me move in right away. I found the divorce support group that helped me survive my divorce process and started me back on the road to living again. It was in that apartment that I found out the cancer was back in Greg, this time in his lungs. I wrote a lot in that apartment, my therapy. I could see and smell the ocean from my windows, and also the freshly baked bread from the big bakery a block away. I could hear the fog horns, the sea gulls and the quiet of living alone
I loved Maine, except for the winter. We had the big ice storm the year I lived there. The one that made the news, and shut down power for days in Montreal and other parts of the northeast. The reason I left Maine, was to try and do what I'd set out to do originally… go to Meredith College in Raleigh, NC and become a paralegal. I got the encouragement from the women in my displaced homemakers class to try again.
So, I had all sorts of thoughts running through my mind as I drove the interstate east and north. It was early afternoon, but rainy and foggy. I accidently woke Evelyn up trying to reach my purse in the back seat for the toll on the New Hampshire turnpike. The tourist information center was temporarily closed for repairs. She woke more easily at the toll booth on the Maine turnpike, and then went to sleep. I was watching the road which was familiar to me, and I started crying, thinking about everything that had happened since that first time I was on I-95 in Maine. I remembered the first time I had ever been to Maine, on what was supposed to be a second honeymoon with my husband, and turned out to be a trip I'd never forget, and could be a whole story in itself. I had arranged to have all three children at camp. We really were going to spend most of the two weeks in Atlantic Canada, so we drove through Maine, off the main highway, up to Lubec and Campobello, and then came back on the ferry to Portland. He'd rented a Mustang convertible so I could drive it, see if I liked it and wanted one for my own. But I only drove three times, because each time I did, I either drove too fast or got us lost or did something wrong. We stopped and picked up dozens of brochures about Maine and its attractions at the tourist inforomation center. It was a trip we played by ear, making most of the reservations the night before. Sometimes we stayed in cute B&B's, and other times in regular motels. But not once did we have sex. I got blamed for getting us lost in Halifax and it was my fault the B&B in Halifax was down the street from the fire department. I guess I did a few things right on that trip, like finding the Hopewell Cape Rocks Canadian park where the tide goes completely out and you can walk on the ocean floor. And he did like the lighthouse at the eastern most tip of PEI where the Atlantic Ocean and St. Laurence River converge. But it certainly wasn't the trip I'd wanted, one where we fell in love again. I did fall in love with Maine though.
The second time I was in Maine was on our big college tour. All five of us packed in a minivan and touring just about every college on the east coast in a two week span. We ended up in Brunswick on a Sunday, so no tour of Bowdoin, but we did find a beach there, and the kids got their first look and taste of the Atlantic Ocean. I remember how blasé the kids were, since they'd already seen the Pacific. Not me. I love the ocean, the sand, the surf, the smell. We wandered up and back down the shoreline for about an hour. We of course hit LL Bean and bought clothes for everyone. And then we headed west to continue our touring the next day.
Here I was driving up to Portland. I was now divorced, Greg was dead and I was living in Arizona. I was still unsure of where my life was going, just as I'd been when I moved there. The tall pine trees were half hiding in the fog. I couldn't hide, though. We drove through Portland on the freeway and I looked up at the East prom from the exit I used to take but we continued north and stopped at the tourist center outside of Freeport. We called an 800 number for a place half a mile up the street from a pay phone and made reservations for the night. Because of the weather, Freeport was comparitively empty. We parked easily and wandered around some of the outlet stores. I used to drive up to Freeport all the time when I lived in Portland, to look around LL Bean and the Mangy Moose. I bought a few things at both those stores. I had little use for the outlet stores there, though I did frequent the Bass shoe one. Our shopping trip completed, we went to look for a gas station. I drove north, and before we knew it we were in Brunswick. I decided we should eat there, and found the Sea Dog Brewery and Tavern. Evelyn got it in her head that she had to have French onion soup, which sounded good to me too. But what to have with it ? She first suggested the appetizer of two pretzels, which didn't appeal to me. I suggested we split a sandwich. Then she saw nachos on the menu, and that started an evening of the nacho cheese joke. (say it slowly… nacho cheese… not yo cheese) I didn't say it was a funny joke, though we laughed over it all night. We ended up splitting a carolina pulled pork sandwich, which was not representative of Maine, but it was good. The girl at the table next to us had nachos, and Evelyn just kept saying nacho cheese and laughing. We watched a band set up near us, but left before they started playing. I had a hard time watching them, remembering when my ex was in his band way back when, and thinking about Greg and his band. Both of us were tired, so we headed back towards the motel, with a stop for Ben and Jerry's at the market on the way. We read in the room, watched some tv and for what might the only time on this trip, slept in the same bed like we do when she's at my house.
In the morning, I was up first and showered and dressed and sat quietly and read. I woke her up a little after 9 and finally we were ready to start back. This time, I drove through Portland. Exited at Washington South and turned up Oak to Sheridan, past my apartment. It looked the same, though a different car was in my parking spot. I wondered if the other car was Karla's, the woman who was my neighbor. But we didn't stop, nor did I phone any of the women from my displaced homemakers class. I drove the narrow bricked up streets and eventually took us over the new bridge and down to my favorite beach. For a while I thought we were going the wrong way, because I remembered the beach being near my friend Jane's house. But Evelyn said she remembered it, and once I saw the little store I think Lowell and I stopped at, I felt reassured. We parked the car, put our jackets on and wandered down toward the water first. I kept stopping and picking up rocks till both my pockets were full of rocks. Looking at the water that disappeared in the fog, the tears started again. It was in this water I had placed my mother's remains. Which in turn made me think of Greg's remains back in the house in Minnesota. I got another warning about crying from Evelyn, and I quoted lyrics from a Sarah McLachlan song, I will not forget you. I threw bitter tears in the ocean but all that came back was the tide. But she wandered off a ways from me, and I just stood there, staring at the water, and letting my tears fall into the ocean. And picking up an occasional rock and throwing it back into the ocean. Finally we climbed up the big rocks, which I continue to tell Evelyn are petrified wood. They could be. The fog horn blew loudly every few minutes, and we walked around the big rocks and I watched the ocean. Usually, the ocean reminds me of my insignificance. The blue water seemingly never ending. There was no difference that day between the ocean and the fog, though you could see some waves breaking. I didn't want to go too close to the end of the rocks, and eventually Evelyn got cold and we walked back to the car. She held both my hands so I couldn't pick up any more rocks. Before getting into the car, I took one long deep breath. I love the smell of the ocean, and I wanted a reminder of it to take back to Northampton and to Prescott with me.
We drove down old US 1 instead of the interstate, partly for the scenic route, but mostly because I was in no hurry to leave Maine. Evelyn said she was hungry, and as we passed through one vacation town after the other and I pointed out interesting looking places to stop, but soon we were in Kittery. Once again we had words, and continued driving. We were in New Hampshire before long, and finally stopped for lunch in Massachusetts, at a Wendy's. I had once again left Maine, but I think I have Maine and my experiences there too ingrained in me to really ever leave Maine. I hope to go back soon, for a longer period of time and wander how I would prefer to. And sit by my beach on the big rocks and think and dream and hope, like I've done many times before. Listening to the sounds and breathing in the sea air, and remembering my place in the world.
©28 February, 2000There are more stories I have written to read. Please remember these are my original stories and thoughts, and to copy or otherwise use them without my permission is a copyright violation. I would love to hear your random thoughts on any of these stories.