Closing Time

I am thankful for a rainy day today. 

A rainy day to take down and dust pictures, wash curtains, really vacuum the corners. Think quietly about all the happenings, good and bad, of the last six months.  It’s “closing time” for those of us who summer on the Maine Coast.  The heater going on several times during the night and the grasses frosted in the mornings signal that it is time for our exodus to warmer homes in the “South”.  Florida or the Carolinas. Georgia. In my case, south is Massachusetts.  Cold comfort, indeed.

Like many whom I speak to in passing, I don’t know where this Summer went.  The rainy June made way for a cool-ish July, and those “lazy-hazy days of Summer” seemed to have passed us by quite completely. In late August, the neighborhood emptied of college students and teachers first, then the kids returning to elementary or high schools. We put our youngest daughter on a plane bound for Jaipur, India for a semester of study.  

By Labor Day weekend, Route 1 in Wells, Maine was quiet.  Peacefully, startlingly so. And still, the days flashed by.

Luckily, the 90 mile drive to the seashore is one I don’t mind taking during the late Fall and Winter months.  There are those who need to see the mountain vistas to refresh their souls, but I long to stare out on the vast sea, smell the tang in the air, listen to the waves lapping the shore.   I’ll make the trek, at least once a month, to sit on the wall at Fisherman’s Cove.  The houses that stand guard on that stretch of shore will be vacant and boarded up.  The gulls will be quiet, watchful, trying to conserve energy. And I, bundled-up and hopeful, will be planning the events of next Summer.  All those busy activities we think we should do -- that somehow get forgotten in the slower rhythm of life by the seashore. – And that’s ok, too.  

Being here is enough. And I am thankful for this rainy day so that I can remember that being here is enough.