Memorial Day

Memorial Day kicks off summer in Maine. We go from winter to summer now, it seems. What happened to spring-sixty-five-to-seventy-degree days with afternoon showers, green buds popping on trees, daffodils and tulips lasting more than a few days? Now it goes straight from high forties to eighty-five! We'll take it no matter. I promise I'm not complaining!

Summer to me means.....

friends & get togethers

Scarborough Beach and walking to Prouts Neck

icy ocean water and seaweed wrapping around my ankles

the smell of salt ocean air

sunshine sparkling on waves

charcoal cook outs at Two Lights State Park

clam cakes and fries at the Lobster Shack once per season

decks & barbecues

the smell of coconut oil

blue hydrangeas in a glass vase on my table

swimming, kayaking, tennis, walking, running (slowly)

camps on lake

outdoor fireplaces and lounging chairs

potato chips

watermelon & lots and lots of berries -- strawberries, blueberries, raspberries

...............Summer to me means....a-h-h-h-h

Photo: Echo Lake, Mount Desert Island

Thank You

My travel memoir, Away at a Camp in Maine, came out last July. I was amazed and humbled from the support and positive reinforcement I received from friends and family - it went beyond anything I had imagined.

Marketing to bookstores, gift shops, and kids' summer camps in Maine as a parting keepsake for campers (since Chapter 17 is about just such a camp on Crescent Lake) has gone harder than I expected. There is less interest, despite my sending hundreds of requests and emails.

The shelf life of a book, unless you're Charlotte's Web (!), is really only about a year or so. This spring, I wanted to give my little gift book one final push before I called myself "done" with it. What I found is that it was absolutely right to take a chance and a leap of faith and publish it in the beginning and it was absolutely right to give it a final push. For all of these things, I am so grateful. The kindness of others has touched me deeply and validated something that has been important to me all my life. From the bottom of my heart.....thank you.

• my book hit the shelves of L. L. Bean just in time for Memorial Day tourists - the Pulitzer in my world!
• July 15, I will be doing a reading/speaking/slide-show about the book at the Portland Public Library in their "local author" Brown Bag lunch series
• June issue of Down East magazine displays an ad for my book
• On a recent trip to Florida, I saw my book as a "coffee table book" in my relatives' homes.
• I was called out of the blue on a rainy Saturday a few weeks ago by a woman who bought my book at The Good Life Market in Raymond. She worked with my father-in-law many years ago and tracked me down. She loved my cover, the title, and the book itself. She told me she grew up on Watchic Lake and had "the leeches, the drowning boy," everything I described. Wow. She made my day.

Photo: my book on the shelves of L. L. Bean

Vacation Day

A couple weeks ago was school vacation and I took a day off. I have female colleagues with small children who struggle to find sitters for each day of vacation so they won't have to take time off although they have plenty of vacation time to use (some goes unused each year) and certainly the pressing need for a small break. I have taken some days off during every school vacation of the last fifteen years since my boys have been in school....and I've loved it. I no longer need to, but I want to.

It's been good for the boys....it's been good for me. Generally, school vacations come just at the time when I'm so in need and due for a little time off myself -- perfectly scheduled throughout the year. Why not? I do something similar by taking one vacation day each Tuesday through the summers. It provides change and breaks up the ho-hum flow of our everyday routine. My being home to make lunches, cookies, a good dinner, allow friends in, or give rides to the movies or the Mall are appreciated by my family. They don't have to do same-old, same-old every day. We can do something fun together or we can do nothing - that's what vacation is supposed to be.

On my day off, instead of jumping up to unload the dishwasher, put in a load of laundry, pull on the running sneakers and pound the pavement, I grabbed my Oprah Magazine and got back into bed....by myself. Can't remember the last morning I stayed in bed alone. It was fabulous! It was quiet and peaceful and big! (I mean the bed was big when I was in it by myself, my husband long gone to work.) My son was still asleep; I was cozy and relaxed and doing something different than my daily work routine.

Ideas began to come to me in almost everything I read in the magazine. Truly, I got the inspiration for about 20 blog ideas. I've been a little dry on ideas lately but that morning, they were just free flowing almost like a waterfall, gushing out of me actually, and giving me such pleasure in having them and thinking more about them. I laughed out loud. It is only when we pause, when we change our routine and do nothing, that everything else comes into focus. Stopping allows whatever is deep inside us to stir. Keeping perpetually busy, surrounded by conversation and noise, squelches our ability to hear our inner voice.

That morning, I was a calmer, saner, more enlightened person than when I went to bed the night before. That feeling lingered and everything in my life, even when I went back to work, benefitted from it. A vacation day, quiet time alone.....what a beautiful concept!

Photo: Stroudwater