Dirigo

A trio of Maine Stories

Preface

Almost every summer of my 66 years, I have spent some time in Maine. My ancestor, James Millay, came from County Kilkenny, Ireland, to Maine in the mid-18th century and planted our family’s heritage Down East. My great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, parents, cousins and siblings have all spent time in Maine, and today, Maine is home to my sister, step-brother, step-nephew, some cousins, son, and grandson. I call Maine my “soul home.” When I am there, I feel complete. Settled. It is, you could say, “in my bones.”

“Dirigo” is the Maine motto. In Latin, it means, “I lead. I direct.” This is a reference to the leadership of the pioneers who settled Maine, signifying their independence and the significance of Maine as the easternmost state. In my job, I lead. I direct- a diocese. It is on these annual treks that I get to step away from all that and let the geography, my heritage, tradition and my heart – lead.

This summer’s trip was a quick one. Glenn and I arrived home on a Sunday night at 10 PM from a California trip to see kids and grandkids, and by Monday morning at 9 AM, I was in the car with a bag full of clean clothes, headed Down East. My sister awaited me, graciously making time in her schedule to host me.

1. Steamers

A big part of any trip, for me, is exploring the local cuisine and eating what the land (or sea) has to offer. When most people go to Maine, lobster is at the top of their “must eat” list. For me, it is steamed clams. My mother used to tell a story of how, on the summer just before my first birthday, I took my first wobbly steps (in South Harpswell) and also ate my first steamed clam. I guess, back then, parents didn’t worry about things like shellfish allergies. I must have had enough teeth to manage the rubbery black neck, or siphon, of the clam and the attached “belly,” full of briny, soft, clammy-goodness. (I am at a loss for words of how to describe, exactly, the taste of a clam.). As I grew, summer by summer, I learned the ritual of extracting the clam from the shell, slipping the neck from its papery covering, swirling the clam around in the cup of broth provided at the table, dipping it again, this time in melted butter, and then getting the whole clam into your mouth without dripping butter all over the front of your shirt. (Lobster eaters are often given big, infantilizing paper bibs to catch their drips. Clam eaters are better than that.). At the end of the steamer-session, you finish by carefully drinking the leftover broth, stopping just short of taking in the gritty, sludgy sand at the bottom of the cup. The broth tastes like the sea.

My sister and I went to Cook’s Lobster and Ale House on Bailey Island to find our steamers. It is one of two or three places that we have been going to for decades. One of the other places, Estes Beach, closed, sadly, in the last year or so. Estes was where I tasted my first clam, but Cooks did not disappoint on our recent trip. My first taste of clams this year was almost shocking in its perfection: salty sweetness, briny broth, silky butter, chewy and soft. We made our way through a shared bucket of clams, and, later, had a haddock, scallop and shrimp casserole. Heaven.

In a short trip of a few days, I also managed to enjoy fried whole belly clams and a lobster roll. The lobster roll (wars have been fought over this I am sure) was done the “right way-” on a toasted hot dog bun filled with lobster meat and dressed with a kiss of melted butter. No Mayo. I repeat. No Mayo. We ate outside at picnic tables under a striped umbrella and enjoyed this second seafood feast.

Maine has other things on the menu of course, most notably tiny blueberries baked into sweet pies just screaming for a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and Moxie soda (not my preference, but a family favorite and native to Maine), the “Whoopie Pie” (the origin of which is also claimed by our friends in Pennsylvania), and, in recent years, the “potato donut.” Maine grows a lot of potatoes (they used to give kids a leave from school to assist with the harvesting of potatoes, back in the day) and at least one clever entrepreneur has chosen to create a line of gourmet donuts made with potato flour. I made a trip to “Holy Donuts” and couldn’t decide between the chocolate sea salt donut or the toasted coconut donut so… I got both. They were dense, delicious and novel. Other flavors that we brought home included blueberry lemon, maple, and old fashioned cinnamon.

I did not go home hungry.

2. A Perfect Maine Day

My mother used to exclaim on bright, sunny, breezy August days, “It’s a perfect Maine day.”

I got to enjoy four “perfect Maine days” on this visit.

For me, part of a trip to Maine includes a visit to our “old haunts.” Among them are Monhegan Island (not possible this time), Land’s End on Bailey Island, Estes Beach in South Harpswell, Cundy’s Harbor (have to have a Moxie there, it’s tradition… it is also where my grandson Kieran lives in the old sea captain’s house), Great Island (where my mom lived for a couple of decades), Bowdoinham (site of the cemetery where James and Abigail Millay and other relatives are buried and site of the “family farm” on Merrymeeting Bay), the Dolphin Marina, and Lookout Point- a spit of land in Casco Bay with an old seaside inn where my mom and her cousins stayed in summers past. At the end of the road at Lookout Point there is a swimming beach on one side, and, on the other, an iconic tiny Maine island with a few pines trees and a rocky shore.

My sister and I went on a “junket” (we know that a “junket” is really a pleasure trip for government officials paid for with public funds… and also a creamy gelatin based dessert, but we’ve been using this word incorrectly to describe a “Sunday drive” for years and it’s too late to change now,) and on this occasion, we got to several of our favorite places, including Lookout Point.

The sea was mineral blue, the wind just high enough to make the water sparkle and shine. The pine trees on the shore and the tiny island offered a deep green accent and the sky was cerulean (in Latin, this word means “heaven”). There were just enough puffy clouds to balance the whole composition. If you’ve been to the seaside, you know the smell that greeted us when we lowered the windows: pine, salt water, seaweed. The lapping of waves on the shore and the crying gulls completed the scene. A perfect Maine Day.

3. Are You There?

When I go to Maine, I stay in my mother’s apartment. It is a “mother-in-law” apartment built at my sister’s house years ago when my widowed mother decided to leave the big island deck house at Little Crow Point and move “into town.” It was a good move for someone in their eighth decade and, for me, it removed my worry about what was going on when my mother didn’t answer my phone calls on the first few rings. I was glad that she was “in town” (Brunswick) and that she had my sister and her family just downstairs.

My mother died fourteen years ago at the age of 85. It seems like yesterday.

When I stay in her apartment I find myself wandering over to her bookcase and sitting on the rug in front of it, studying the titles of her small library, conjuring her memory. My mother studied English Literature earning an undergraduate degree at Wheaton College (MA) and a Master’s at Columbia University. She taught English at the Kent School. Back then the curriculum included works of Keats, Shelly, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Faulkner, Willa Cather and the Book of Job from the Old Testament. I’m sure that there was more, but these are the authors and works that I remember the most from years and.years of gazing at the same bookcase when, filled with the same titles, it was in my bedroom, inches from my bed. I would wake and study the books, thinking of the stories inside them. (I hand’t read many of them back then and I am sure that the stories that I imagined were far from what actually filled the pages.)

When I am at my mother’s apartment, I think about her long and brave life (widowed, first, in her thirties with three small children and then again, in her sixties, living in a big seaside house), and I think about all the things that I didn’t ask her, or that we didn’t discuss. It’s all hindsight. I didn’t have the questions fully formed in my earlier years.

I look at the artwork on her walls (some of it from her own hand), and the small harpsichord tucked into the corner (no one has played it for years), and sometimes I open the closet door to look at her cd collection and the few “iconic” clothing items like her white knit hat, or straw hat with the floppy brim, or her red woolen toggle coat that my sister and I haven’t been able to part with. This time there was an exercise bike placed in front of the closet door that kept me from digging too deeply.

I sit at the counter that she called “Command Central” and work on my laptop, remembering her, here, with her own laptop and her habit of doing the NYT crossword puzzle in pen (with occasional splotches of Wite-Out). I sleep in her bed and look around the breezy bedroom and at its appointments: a small pine dresser that’s been in the family for generations, a pine framed mirror on her dresser that was a wedding gift to my parents at their wedding, a cross stitch that I did in the early 80s quoting the lyrics of a favorite hymn, and a colonial style candle holder that my brother, Courtney, made as a Christmas gift one year.

I catch glimpses in my memory of her favorite quips: “Pull up your socks.” “Good night!” (said with exasperation), “Smile! It’s your birthday!” (said on any day that was not your birthday but when you were grumpy), and I strain to hear her voice.

Mourning, it seems, can go on for decades, and it is tender, not all bad.

Postlude

I left the same way that I came, over the Piscataqua River Bridge that connects Maine to New Hampshire, less than a week after my arrival. This bridge, when heading Down East is a symbol of release and anticipation. Heading back to home, it is a taking back of responsibility, emails, and the work to which I have been called.

I’m ready to be home and have ten hours of wheel time to think about it. It is a gentle ride (I left at 5 AM and missed most of the traffic) and when I get home, I am happy to be there.

Until next August, Maine.