what word shall it be?

after astrid and willa went back to texas i discovered a piece of creased notebook paper written in pencil and submerged in a pile of odds and ends. as i held the paper portion of the accumulated stuff over the recycle bin—ready to release my hold and let it all slip away—i stopped. i decided to leaf through the detritus to verify that it was, in fact, junk, and not something of value in need of being saved. i'm glad i took the time to do so because under the advertising circulars, magazines, and envelopes enticing me with offers of credit cards, vinyl siding and replacement windows, i found this small gem, a gem from the mind of a young child on vacation in a place she had never before experienced.

astrid had begun to form ideas off the letters that spell "maine" (is there a name for doing this? an acrostic or something?) and then, at some point, seems to have been abruptly interrupted. she might have left her writing behind to eat dinner, or to head out on a fun excursion, or to get ready for bed; or she might have been distracted by her sister or the dog or the lure of a campfire and s'mores. whatever the case may have been, she never resumed her writing and the paper was forgotten and abandoned.

as i read the words i had found, i smiled. the girls had only left two days before, but already the events of the previous fourteen days had formed themselves into a prized collection of memories, the kinds of memories that are sweet and persistent and insist on being mulled over.

for your information, maine, it turns out, is "mainly cold"and yet it is also an "amazing place"; it is where imaginings and dreams are sparked, and the "not a warm sea" stretches to the horizon.

but then what? what about the last letter of the word m-a-i-n-e? what about that final "e"? astrid's writing suddenly ends, leaving the sorry looking "e" hanging there, and leaving me wanting more. what else were you going to say, little girl? the incomplete "e" stands by itself, lonely and unfinished at the bottom of the page. what could have come next in her thought process about maine? what might she have been thinking? what would the "e" have become? what else could she have added?

perhaps the "e" might have started off the word enjoyable. or energetic. or easygoing? or how about exquisite, extraordinary, eventful? maybe excited to explore someplace new. maine overflows with all these words.

or eating perhaps—we did a lot of that. the girls tasted lobster for the first time, although willa didn't particularly care for it. but that was fine with me—i love lobster and got to devour her leftovers.

i have taken the delightful piece of work and, for the time being, have tucked it away in a safe place. perhaps the author might finish it at a later date—at least i hope, i really hope, that's what will happen.

three girls from texas

Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.  —Annie Dillard



there were once three girls from texas. one afternoon in july they (and james!) landed quite nicely upon our doorstep. i was glad that megan, astrid and willa (as in willa cather—is that great or what?—whose stories and novels about frontier life, and the early settlers on america's great plains, are rich and authentic and populated with intelligent and resourceful pioneer women) came to maine to spend many afternoons; they stayed with us for two glorious weeks.

when the girls (and james!) first arrived, it seemed as if the days stretched out forever in front of us and that we had all the time in the world to see and do the things we wanted to see and do: the portland waterfront, the children's museum, the maine wildlife park, some shops in freeport, a cruise around casco bay on denny's boat, a pool party, the all-day gentlemen of the road concert overlooking the ocean on the eastern promenade (that james and megan, and hannah and her friends, went to) and featuring mumford and sons and fireworks in the evening, a hop aboard mike bretton's lobster boat to watch him haul up a few traps and help him measure some lobsters to see if there were any "keepers", a backyard lobster feast, highly competitive games of ladderball, and a trip to vermont to visit the new baby and spend a couple of activity packed days at jay peak.

i had forgotten the boundless energy, curiosity, and high-pitched chatter of the five and seven year-old crowd, and even though i was exhausted every night—the second my head hit the pillow i immediately sailed into dreamland—i loved hearing the giggles and the make-believe play, and even the inevitable squabbles. the two little girls were completely delightful and endearing.

it never ceases to amaze me how children—and some adults—use their imagination and create a time of wonder for themselves. astrid and willa announced i had the biggest flower garden they had ever seen (an example of their sturdy imaginations—it is hardly that big). it seemed as if every few minutes during the first couple of days of their visit they were asking me if they could pick flowers. they wanted to fill jars and vases with bouquets and "make things pretty." i had to firmly but gently quash that idea and instruct them that the flowers, for the most part, were to remain attached to their stems so that we could enjoy—and be surrounded by—the garden's colors, instead of having to look at a barren backyard displaying sad decapitated stalks.

on their last day in maine, i made up a scavenger hunt for the little girls. they were to find things belonging to the natural world (bugs, a yellow finch, a hot pink flower) and also garden related objects (a blue flower pot, a garden sculpture, a watering can), all of it outdoors. astrid's and willa's powers of observation were wonderful. willa noted that there were little brown swimming things in rainwater that had collected in a stone pot. are those tadpoles? she asked. nope, those aren't cute tadpoles, i answered in an ominous voice as i peered into the water. i informed the children that the squiggly critters were in fact hundreds of baby mosquitoes, and, seeing as we have plenty of mosquitoes participating in the forest food chain around here, i promptly dumped the water out.



top photo credit: david stall

yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

some things never get old. some things are always fun.

when little amelia comes to visit, the first toys she usually pulls out of the toy basket are the baby-hand size, square duplo blocks. she loves to click them together into tall, wobbly towers and take them apart again, one block at a time. my kids played with the same colorful plastic squares and rectangles she plays with—such sturdy and long-lasting toys, good stuff, these chunky danish blocks for toddlers.

we went to legoland in denmark when the kids were little and the opportunity presented itself. we'd always had a house full of legos, so what fun it was for them to walk through miniature lego villages and see those intricate plastic creations made entirely of snap together bricks, and then to drive a legoland car and get a legoland driver's license. that was the time we were visiting our danish friends and business associates who lived a short distance away from the theme park. (today their son, martin, actually works for lego.)

then there was the time the danes came over here, intent on heading into the wilds of maine. i remember when ed, city-boy bjorn, james, martin and a few other guys (including two more danes) went on a father/son, canoe/camping trip in "our" wilderness. that was the second time (the first one was also a maine canoe trip) and final time bjorn ever did anything quite as, shall i say, rustic and primitive as that in his life. (five days of no showers—but there was great swimming—no outhouses, and rough spots along the beautiful river, with just enough room under the trees for tents and a campfire, to call home for the night.) early in our marriage i also enjoyed doing this trip a few times, paddling along the remote west branch of the penobscot river and down wind-whipped chesuncook lake. i wonder why we could never get bjorn to set foot in the maine woods again. two visits that included roughing it were enough, i guess.

but back to the legos. james was addicted to legos and played with the smaller bricks until he was about eleven, building his way through the age levels, patiently putting together many boxes of intricate pirate and space and technic sets. once, when he was home from college, i looked wistfully into a box filled with the broken-apart, mixed-together colored bits of two wrecked pirate ships and asked him if he could please reconstruct them into their original glory. james was happy to do so. he rebuilt one ship (with hardly a glance at the instructions) and promised to do the other one soon. (that was almost ten years ago—i really need to get after him to rebuild the second one when he's home in maine.)

i like to look at the pirate ship, that remnant of fleeting years—complete with scruffy little eye-patched pirates ready to fire a canon or pistol in your face—from time to time. occasionally i run a dust cloth over it, but i quickly lose my patience. the spaces between the round connector bumps are impossible to get completely clean without picking at them for an hour with a Q-tip, or soaking the whole thing in water. (who the heck has time for that?) the pirate ship remains, as always, displayed on a shelf—dusty but intact—a relic from the past lives of children, a reminder of halcyon days spun from seemingly endless childhood.

bird rock or not

 a calydonian boar greets visitors at the entrance to the household wing at osborne house

our english friends, the lovely lady katherine and her handsome husband, john—a commoner like the rest of us—from horton, northampton, were recently in maine at their cottage in cape elizabeth. they took time away from their rigorous relaxation schedule—drinking a lot of tea (english habits die hard), reading books, going for walks along the beach, and barbecuing hunks of bloody, meaty things—and favored my husband and me with a few hours of their company. we met at—where else?—gritty's, our local brew pub.

lady katherine was the one who insisted i go to osborne house (!) on the isle of wight—my husband and i were overseas for a few weeks last june and he had a business meeting on the island—to see queen victoria's summer palace and the walled garden. i assumed she had been there; turns out she has never set foot in the place. the things you learn. so the four of us laughed about that, and talked about life in northampton, life in maine, life in general, and swapped stories about our aging parents and our grown children and their boyfriends/girlfriends/husbands—all the usual catching-up topics.

later, after we had said our goodbyes, i thought about the house they used to rent in cape elizabeth. i smiled to myself when i remembered how the seagulls would line up side by side, perching from one end of the roof to the other, like ducks in a carnival shooting gallery. they always seemed to be resting on lady katherine's roof, but not on any others. i guess the birds liked lady k's view the best.

funny, isn't it, how you'll have something random on your mind and then that will conjure up more similarly random thoughts. thinking about the cape elizabeth seagulls brought to mind other maine places where birds like to congregate in large numbers—the shorebirds at popham beach and in the nooks and crannies along our rocky coast, the great gatherings of puffins on eastern egg rock, and the seagulls and cormorants on the thousands of ledges and anonymous, vaguely egg-or-dumpling-shaped rocks in the ocean which are often surrounded by rafts of eiders and nosy harbor seals—also found on the "seal rocks" near portland—in the bay's rolling tide.

my train of thought kept coming back to eggs and rocks, and rocks and eggs, and rocks that, by scrunching your eyes into a good squint, resembled eggs. of course, once eggs got in my head, i had no choice but to think of birds.

i was given an animal picture book when i was a child which had a nice drawing of a large rock with lots of birds on it. that rock was the first rock—in what would become a long line of rocks—i knew to be called egg. i asked my parents why the author called it egg rock and they said can't you see why? it's obvious—it's shaped like an egg. that answer might have been obvious to them, but it was far from  obvious to me—it did not satisfy me then, and it still doesn't satisfy me. in my opinion, the rock in question appeared egg-ish or egg-like but it also appeared quite dumpling-ish or meatball-ish since it was basically roundish and therefore only an approximation of an egg's shape. i thought how dumb can parents be?

i argued with my parents that the rock in the picture book had birds all over it so wouldn't it only make sense to call it bird rock. (this was long before i knew about seal rock, which would have helped my argument immensely.) that's an obvious name, i told them. besides, some giant, mythical mutha of a bird had to lay that monster egg of a rock in the first place, and now the rock was covered with birds. everywhere birds, birds, birds. it's a bird rock, i insisted, like it or not.

my parents said to me bird rock or not bird rock, you're so argumentative you should become a lawyer. (they said that many times while i was growing up.)

maybe i should have, but i never did.


~ congratulations. you made it to the bottom of the page. now you get to hear the truth. i have a confession to make: my friend katherine is not a lady at all.... well, i mean, she is a lady, a lovely lady, just not a royal lady. i call her lady katherine because someone actually thought she was a royal lady once. but that's a story for another day.

into the teeth of the sea

i look back to where my mother set up our beach chairs. the hot sand is covered with a sea of colorful striped beach umbrellas. our own red, yellow and green umbrella is out there somewhere, but i can't find it. they all look the same to me. (one day—could it have been this day?—i got lost on the beach amidst all those confusing stripes, but my mother found me before i wandered too far away from our place on the sand.)

i squeeze my mother's hand. i am so little. one of my earliest memories is this day at the beach. we are walking toward the water, toward the waves. don't let go of my hand. don't let go of my hand. i am thinking those words. do i say them to her?

it seems as if we have been walking for a long time. i am tired. i notice the curvy lines the mollusk-filled, lettered olive shells create, leaving wet sand messages just like i do with a stick. i am sweaty and i want to cool off in the ocean. suddenly i see the waves. they are huge and frothy, white and noisy. my mother senses i am nervous so she encourages me by leaning down, looking into my eyes, and smiling.

"the waves are fun, you'll see. i'll lift you over them and you'll be flying along the water like a dolphin. you'll be at home in the sea like a starfish or a seahorse. and i promise i won't ever let you go," she says.

i am afraid the first time i meet the monster's foaming mouth, the waves like teeth noisily chomping at me—i wonder how hungry is the sea?—ready to snatch me up and swallow me down as i foolishly wade straight into them. a big one, a real soaker, gets me, throws its big mouth over my head trying to devour me, but my mother never lets go.

that was long ago and this is today. today i have no fear of the sea, i have only a deep, unquenchable longing for its beauty, its seductive power, its vast wildness. as much as the sea changes, turning by degrees from calm to roaring, rolling, churning, it also remains the same, an endless, comforting, back and forth—a sea time shuffle across the shore. i like that.

when i am on the island i open the sliding doors to welcome the sound and the smell of the sea into the house. the waves no longer look scary, but instead have turned into broad, toothy grins smiling up at me. the sea rushes in and does not attempt to eat me up, but greets me kindly and fills me to overflowing with peace.

i'll sing you songs

do you ever find yourself hungrily inhaling familiar air, gulping down great whiffs of it? and when you do, the smell you draw into your nostrils hits you hard, provokes a memory? does a scent fill you up and lead you back across the years to a spot which had a hold on you, perhaps still does, unleashing images and feelings forever imbedded in your psyche?

when my sense of smell is awakened by anything resembling a pineneedley-mountainy-woodsydirt mixture i am transported to where i spent summer after childhood summer. i sniff. i slowly drag the scent deep inside my nasal passages.

i am at the river. i remember this.

down by the rocky swift river in the white mountains of new hampshire during one of the hottest julys on record—according to my mother—my cousins and i wiled away the hours in that happy summertime land of childhood where our only responsibility, our only steadfast endeavor, was to play, to play hard.

so we did.

our daily attire for the hard work of river play consisted of rapidly fading and fraying bathing suits. there certainly wasn't a lot of  laundry to be done since we existed in suits which were soaked river water fresh every day. yet our day in and day out routine of sliding down boulders and pulling ourselves up boulders took its toll on our suits—when we got back to boston my mother promptly tossed mine in the trash.

we stood knee-deep in the rushing river which, back then, was clear as gin—fresh and clean enough to drink!—and hauled rocks off the sandy bottom to build our own private swimming hole. the river wasn't too deep or wide and it was full of rocks and boulders so we could, in places, hop-scotch across the rapids and tumbling whitewater without getting our feet wet if we were careful. the daily game was: who can get across the river first -without falling in!

we worked off and on for a few summers, repairing, excavating, enlarging, to create our perfect swimming hole, humming and singing to pass the time. (we'd sing i've been working on the river to the melody of i've been working on the railroad.) we called it "ye ole swimming hole." our parents wondered why we spent all our time on such a project when the river offered many of its own nature-made pools to swim in. oh dear silly parents, the answer was obvious: we want to make our own swimming hole, one we design and build all by ourselves! 

the site for our engineering feat was carefully chosen near an isolated place on the river where we pitched our tents. for years my parents had loved to camp out in the summer. they were back-to-nature, back-to-the-land kind of folks, people who recycled and composted way before that became the thing to do. in the summer during my early years, while my friends went to organized camps and their parents played tennis and golf, i lived in a wilderness camp; i built swimming holes, rode down the river on an air mattress, swam and hiked. my parents chopped wood, bought food from local farmers and also swam and hiked. in addition, we had a very basic—no plumbing or electricity—very old and run down, but perfectly dry, hunting cabin where the adults sometimes slept.

ye ole swimming hole boasted three large, grand, slightly angled boulders with flat tops which circled the perimeter where we were building up the sides with rocks we dug out of the middle. on the far side of one of them the river fell off and a three-foot-high waterfall cascaded over the stones. below the falls was a small, calm, bath-tub sized pool surrounded by the gushing whitewater. even with temperatures in the 90's, our bodies soon became icy in the mountain water. we would flop on the hot, hot sun-baked stones to warm up, then head back into our pool once we had toasted all sides, and swim or sit under the waterfall and freeze our heads off. then back up on the hot stones again, joyfully repeating this scenario over and over.

another memory is sparked by a black and white photo of me from those river years: i have medium length, straight blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. i am about seven years old and i am wide-mouthed, singing a song while dancing around the campfire at dusk. someone had a guitar and i remember singing songs. first i would belt out the real words of the song, then i would sing my own crazy made-up version until my wonderful song started to get on everyone's nerves and—according to my mother—my mother would politely tell me shush, it was time to sing the real words again with the rest of the people gathered around the fire.

pshaw! those people just didn't appreciate a good song when they heard it!

songs of summer, songs of the river, songs of the way it was, all part of the melody of childhood.....

painted easter eggs

hurry up..... get out the paints and little paintbrushes and grab some real eggs. quick, quick.

a few of ophelia's eggs, the first ones dating back to around 1973, are still here today. all her eggs are painted, mostly by me and, along with some painted chicken eggs which have been added to the collection, are lovingly displayed on the kitchen counter in a basket, not just at eastertime, but all year. the eggs are simply too pretty, too fragile and too nostalgic for me to stick them in a cabinet.

large chicken eggs are about 2 inches in length. ophelia's goose eggs range from 3 1/4 to 3 3/4 inches!

here's how you have great fun and create painted eggs which last for decades:

*with a large sewing needle, gently tap and prick the shell on the large end of the egg to open up a hole about 3/16 inch wide. do the same on the small end, making the opening somewhat smaller, about 1/8 inch.

*poke and swirl around in the large opening with the largest sewing needle you have (a darning needle works great) to loosen up the egg white and yolk.

*put your mouth over the small hole and gently blow. it can be difficult, and may take a while, like blowing up a very small balloon. keep at it. the stuff inside the egg will start to ooze out of the large hole. pick inside the large hole every now and then with the big needle, and CAREFULLY shake the egg to keep the egg white/yellow moving out. when it's all out, dribble some water into the egg and swirl it around. shake it out and let the egg dry completely.

*now paint your egg. then wrap and glue fine ribbon around the egg to cover the holes. happy easter! enjoy!

a little scandinavian folklore

http://sweetwhisperdreams.blogspot.com/2010/11/maine-coast-fairy-brunch.html

a tomte spotted in our maine woods. hand-made figure crafted in sweden by rolf berg.

this tiny, 4 inch tall gnome, is called a tomte in swedish and a nisse in norwegian and danish. he is a mythical character in scandinavian folklore; gnomes are related to fairies. my of-norwegian-descent friend got me thinking about the tomte/nisse when she commented on my fairy brunch post.. she knows her norwegian folklore.

this is what i know about him. if anyone wants to add more, please do. the tomte is small and magical and has a long white or gray beard. he usually dresses in a gray clothing and always wears a brightly colored (often red) knitted hat. a house and farm tomte is a solitary fellow who is in charge of protecting a farmer's house and barn. he is very good at his job. if you have a tomte around, you must not EVER forget to leave something for him to eat (he is a vegetarian) to thank him for his protection. at christmas, the tomte especially likes a bowl of oatmeal. if you fail to take care of him (extremely unwise), he will leave your farm unguarded. even worse, he might tip things over or break things, OR even tie your cows tails together! ghastly!

so, if you have a tomte/nisse in residence, please feed him, and DO NOT FORGET the oatmeal at christmas!

wishing you all a splendid weekend!

flower on the wall

during all the painting, repairing and cleaning that had been taking place around here, i noticed a lovely shadow on the wall one day. hannah's bamboo plant was on the windowsill in the blue bedroom (that i wrote about yesterday), and on a sunny, bright morning it was casting this flower shadow on the newly painted blue wall.

looking at flowers on the wall reminds me of the old song, flowers on the wall, that the statler brothers sang, and lewis dewitt wrote....countin' flowers on the wall, that don't bother me at all, playin' solitaire 'till dawn, with a deck of 51, smokin' cigarettes and watchin' captain kangaroo, now don't tell me i've nothing to do.....of course, that's about counting flowers on the wallpaper. but still, i had a wonderful flower on the wall, even it was just a fleeting shadow flower. i only know that song because nancy sinatra sang it on her boots album. i loved that album when i was little, and i even owned a pair of white go-go boots (just like nancy's on the cover of the album) to dance to the song these boots are made for walkin'....

well, i wish i had more shadow flowers on the wall as nice as this one. i would count them all....and whatever happened to my white go-go boots? happy weekend dearies!

maine coast fairy brunch

today i am daydreaming about what to include in a maine coast fairy brunch menu. perhaps this.....

millet seeds
phlox seeds
sunflower seeds
black eyed susan seeds
acorn shell with water

in order for fairies to notice a meal left for them as they fly around in the garden and woods, and also for them to be able to dine properly, the food should be served in an appealing, natural setting. for example, a good place for fairies to eat is on a lovely bed of moss, a large fallen tree, or, in this case, a nice, flat stone of pink speckled maine granite. do you think a fairy will fly by and see that brunch is ready?

look up. there's a fairy. the fairy sees the food that has been prepared for her. from high above in the trees, she will slowly, cautiously, fly down and eat. welcome to our maine garden, tiny guest. enjoy!

happy weekend kiddos!

note: a delightful book about fairy gardens is maureen heffernan's fairy houses of the maine coast.

magical little houses

a tiny rock and birch bark hideaway

many years ago, a couple of trees fell during a january snowstorm. by the time we got to cutting them up, pieces of bark were peeling off the trunks. i saved some of it and made these little houses to put in the garden. when hannah was little, dressing up in fairy costumes and flying around in fairy wings was a fun pastime for her and her friends. she loved to make little houses out of sculpy, too. at some point, these little homes all turned into fairy homes.


i still have them today. it is fun to visit other people's fairy house creations. they are located on monhegan island, squirrel island, mackworth island, and in boothbay at the botanical gardens.

a fairy house at the botanical gardens. photo by robert mitchell.

a good little book with great photos is fairy houses of the maine coast by maureen heffernan. it is interesting to see how tiny, ordinary, bits of bark, sticks, leaves, moss, pinecones, acorns, rocks, sea glass and seashells can be combined to make these quite unique creations. i think i'll gather up some birch bark, acorns, pinecones and sea glass and make another one someday soon....perhaps a rainy day project.....