Back Home(s)

Nine days back home went very quickly. The weather was cool and wet, more like Maine than Massachusetts; there was a day of work and travel; the girls were around in all their energetic glory; there were dinner guests to entertain and a soccer game to attend and some fatherly/husbandly responsibilities to carry out, all amid the comforts of a house and a neighborhood in which we've spent more than 20 wonderful years. Even better, there was no sense of a vacation ended, and months of grinding office hours ahead - we would be back in Maine in no time at all.

It was, however, a little harder to get into a writing routine than I expected; the city has connotations of distraction and work that I may never shake.

We drove back to Owls Head yesterday, through a beautiful warm afternoon of grand cumulous clouds, stopping at a farm stand in Warren for vegetables and bread. There was just enough time for drinks on the deck before the fog rolled in. The girls with friends had been here for the weekend and left the house immaculate. I read Scott Russell Sanders while Cindy made fresh tomato salad. We talked about writing at dinner.

In the past Maine has been a refuge, a restorative, a place to read and write and walk in beauty. With a little work, it may also become a home.