being in maine, land of lakes and sky

I never thought of maine as something to be recorded.

Family vacations up here -always for only a week long to this house, co-owned by my grandmother and her sister have been a regular portion of my summers since i was born.
Always I sleep in the green room with two beds and two closets. Most regular are the meals, lunch is always sandwhiches with bread and butter pickles and cape cod chips. Granma always bought lemonade just for me, really. Maple cookies for me and my father.

Dinners too, are always the same. A type of seafood - since we are out on the point. Pasta for me when I was little. The paisley napkins like bandanas, purple on lavender for my gran, teal on lime green for me. Mom got dark blue and red, and dad got dark green and pale, ochre yellow.

Everything about this place is a quiet tradition. The way each room smells, the large jars of seaglass and water catching the light in the kitchen. The old cast iron coffee grinder and my grandmothers breakfast of english muffins outside on the grass, with three biscuits for Pearly the shittzu. I could ascribe it to the routine life of the elderly, or perhaps the way this island's harbor life functions like the tide.

The house in my mind is itemized the way my child's mind portioned it annually. Each special place stands alone, existing acutely in space and time. The perilous hammock flipping me onto the cool spongy moss below. The nook upstairs where I time traveled with the window, map and sun-strewn chair. The upstairs fireplace lined with a collection of scallop shells, large and thin like layers of one. Most importantly, my sanctuary, the rocks. Out past the point the waves left not sand, but an outcropping of boulders, each rock's shape and color as familiar to me as the scars on my legs. They have always been my own place. Sure, others have treaded nearby, gazed at the tide, perhaps even ventured far enough out to slip on the seaweed. But never explored or collected as thoroughly as I have, never cut their bare feet on the barnacles of low tide, felt the warmth of the the strip of gray slate that cuts through the point.

This home is large, and a trapped in time. It smells of familiarity, of old books and the vaguely musty tinge of the seaside. Neighbors on the cove have those large modern houses, leather couches and beige walls. My grandmother had a sensible style, put together. Everything has it's place. Minute tools in the kitchen for minute tasks.

It's strange being up here without her. My mom goes around trying to do things right, using little butter dishes and cooking full on lobster dinners the way she used to. I even made the blueberry gush the way gran taught me a few summers ago. Here we are trying to uphold the old traditions. As my mom says she's up there lookin' down, my dad opens the closet and sees the Vermeer poster she always thought looked like me and begins to cry.