identity games

Vacation 2024.

This year, like most years, I traveled on vacation with my husband to Maine to visit with family. Glenn and I saw children and grandchildren, siblings, nieces and nephews, cousins and a few old family friends. We went to take the seaside cure of inky waters and cerulean skies, to draw in the healing scent of salt-seaweed-mud-balsam-cedar air, and to willingly submerge our bodies in the frigid waters of Maine. On our first week, we were immersed in the bosom of family in a house on the mainland. On the second week, the two of us traveled to Monhegan.

Our holiday began in a shared house filled to the brim with people whom we love from ages 2 and up, weaving a week of laughter, wine, big meals eaten on the deck, story time on the sofa, bright sun on the beach, low tide walks across sandbars, kites in the air, croquet on the lawn, hours of play with puppets-dolls-action figures-toy cars and Legos, sand in the bottom of the bathtub, and understandably a few exhausted toddler meltdowns when the milk was poured too generously (or not generously enough) in the bowl of cereal for the youngest’s early dinner after a day of hard play and no naps. Imagine being a two and a half foot human among a dozen loud, big people. I loved being a grandma in the middle of it all…love, love, loved it. There is a special kinship in the grandchild-grandparent relationship that, in one’s pre-grandparenting days, you hear about: “Oh, just you wait… you’ll love it. There’s nothing like it. You’ll see.” Well, “they” are right. The love is deep and strong. Becoming a grandparent brings back the fond memories of one’s own early days of parenting, instills such a pride that one’s own offspring are now engaging the game with strength and compassion, and delivers an amazement at the wonder of creation and how genetic traits are so persistent- the almond shaped eyes of the Scanlans, the tilt of his Everett’s head that unwittingly mimics his father’s same gesture, the uncanny resemblance of Alice to her Grandma Jody, and the fiery independence that is all Alice and that is all her mom at the same age… It’s remarkable. Being a grandparent is more than that old joke of “… and at the end of the day you get to go home…” It is about being “once-removed” in the chain of command and discipline that allows for imaginative play, drawing and painting and playing with Play-do for as long as you want, reading stories on the sofa, and making a detour to the ice cream store on the way home from an errand. There’s a connection that feels a little subterranean; you can’t put your finger on it, but you know that you belong to each other. It is tender and strong.

At the start of vacation, there is a process of moving away from … and coming into oneself.

I shed the skin of bishop-administrator-arbiter of problems-preacher-priest. I unzipped the magenta shirt-black skirt-tight white collar and heavy cross and left it at home. I stepped into the khaki shorts-white button-down uniform that has suited me for many years and felt a shift, a returning to another me.

On the drive Down East, we took two cars to allow for some flexibility in our schedules at the end of our holiday. Coming off of a busy week in which I had worked hard to clear my metaphorical desk, I looked forward to the quiet drive to allow my head to catch up with the external shift that revealed knobby winter-white knees poking out of my shorts. I played James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, Little Feat and Bonnie Raitt. I noted places along the way that have marked this trip for more than half a century out the car window: Charlton Plaza, the long stretch up 495, Portsmouth Circle and the crossing over the Piscataquah River Bridge that tells you, on the other side, that you have arrived in Maine: “Vacationland,” where life is “as it should be” (bad, overly prescriptive state slogan).

It takes time for me to ease out of work and into vacation. The “away message” on my computer tells folks that I am unavailable, will not be checking email regularly and to refer urgent matters to my Executive Assistant; it belied the number of times that I peeked anyway, in the first week, unable to shake the habit of keeping abreast of e-mails and to cater to my slightly OCD love of a neatly managed inbox. It took a ferry ride to an island with a sketchy cell signal to really get me to lay it down.

Monhegan is an island ten miles off the coast of Maine. There we hiked miles of coastline, testing our knees- now in their seventh decade- on the endless ups and downs over jagged rocks that line the perimeter of the island. Each circumnavigation of the island (it takes us about 4 hours so… one circumnavigation per day) ended with a cold beer at the brewery on the island. On day two, a basket of fried clams made their way to our table, too, as an afternoon snack. The feeling of being hot, sweaty, appropriately tired and then refreshed with a beer and clams? Cannot. Be. Beat.

Each evening on Monhegan there is a lovely dinner in the candlelit dining room. Fresh fish, risotto, veggies from the garden in the backyard, blueberry crumble. It feels so good after a big day to shower off, put on some clean clothes and, as my mother would say, “feel human again.” We eat early on the island so we can make the hike up to the lighthouse to watch the sunset. We are not alone- a whole crew gathers- and we watch in silence as the sun slips below the horizon, leaving the sky with its kiss of orange-peach-pink.

Here, I feel singularly myself. I am not a boss, a mother, an administrator, a grandmother, a cook or a preacher. Oh, all those other things are such important parts of me that I cherish but here, I am at my most core self…. the self upon which all of those other identities are layered. This core self is important. It is strong and it supports all the other parts of my being that call me into different roles and functions. Oh, I am “wife” or “partner” here, too. After 40 years (44 if you count from our first meeting), that bit is almost inseparable from my core. We do the things of old married couples- you know, completing each other’s sentences, knowing instinctively on a trip when a nap is better than another walk, and when to offer a comment… and when to keep quiet. After 40 years the lines of me-thee are happily blurred.

But that core self. What is it? There is strength (I thank my mother for that), honesty, loyalty, leadership, faith, practicality, and not a small amount of self doubt and self criticism. These last two don’t help, particularly, but they are me.

Standing in the breeze of an offshore wind, slightly sunburned, tired, the edges softened by the day, I stand firmly and fully in myself. And it is good.

I hope that you get some vacation and a chance to be restored.