She occasionally calls me "Grandma" but I'm her great aunt.
She's not yet four, a charmer as are all three-plus-year-old little girls. She is fascinated by the world around her. I hand her a group of books and as she pounces on one illustrated with pre-historic animals, she exclaims, "I LOVE this one!" She picks up a small child-size pamphlet, about 50 years old, "The Haves and Have-Nots" with posture illustrations that seem to interest her and I say it's hers to keep. Outside, I talk about birds, point to them in trees nearby, and to the delightful Monarch butterflies arriving in clusters to feed on fall's floral bouquets and she runs to try to catch them. I note a small sculpted bird settled in a neighbor's garden whose identity she mistakes as she answers with "penquins, pink flamingoes, herons" - not always correct , but still quite a vocabulary, I'm thinking - but then she has been to Florida and lives near Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.
Here, on the Maine coast, she's into talking about snail and clam shells and sand dollars - all an adventure, which I enjoy along with her. Too, she likes the small live fish-in-garden-habitat, especially colorful ones swimming in a neighbor's nearby mini-pond and attempts a variety of names for them. I take her hand and lead her to another child's playhouse into which she peeks, and whose colorful small-fry sized chairs she settles in, one after another.
Normally, my visits with her have been confined to a day or so overnight at my house - or my weekend stay at her home some three hours away. However, recently she, along with her parents, was invited to a Maine wedding on Isle au Haut, a place where artists have ventured and whose work I've seen over the years. I hadn't been to Stonington (the take-off area for the mail boat that services the Isle au Haut) in over 30 years and thought it would be fun to revisit as well as to spend time with this early 40s-aged couple on the trip for which York was their first stopover. So, I joined them on a six-hour automobile ride from York to the Downeast door - and I became the questionable navigator and sometime backseat driver who did not realize that, along with renumbering the I-95 turnpike exits, some changes made old maps obsolete. Thanks to me, we wound up in Gray on the turnpike before realizing the error. Returning, we proved smarter, staying on the coastal Route 1 - picking up 295 in the Bath-Brunswick area, and then to the turnpike south. With an active child in the car, stopovers for energy-releasing periods and appropriate eateries are necessary and the coastal route certainly proved itself preferable.
I did not join the family on Isle Au Haut. First, our overnight Stonington accommodations were excellent; we had a suite of two rooms, kitchenette and bath. Isle Au Haut is primarily private - equipped with a modest outpost that would accommodate only a limited number of overnight wedding guests. Second, the weather was overcast and I wouldn't be able to enjoy the multitudinous island views en route to Isle au Haut, some seven miles out to sea. Third, the boat to the Arcadia National Park section of the island was not running and I couldn't get to that side of the island, unless prepared to hike five miles inland from the town dock where the mail boat docked.
So I remained on the mainland, exploring the new art galleries that had sprung up on Deer Isle and in Stonington, in particular. Beyond this, there was another consideration. Like most seniors, I appreciate quiet time. I had lived for two days and evenings and had traveled for six hours in close quarters in a child-centered atmosphere. The return to a customary adult-dominated one, even if for a day, was welcome.
This decision rewarded. The weather cleared the next day and, to my wonder, I saw the area through the eyes of the great American artist John Marin who summered here: his most inspirational harbor filled with working boats, his frequently painted evergreen-loaded islands dotting this extraordinary area, the complex architectural elements of the houses he noted. Everywhere I walked, Stonington harbor returned a different view, a changed angle, a new look. I kept seeing Marin's brilliant work in varying perspectives before me - the pine trees with upturned limbs, the sails twisted this way and that, the bouncing ships, the floats of clouds against the many blues, the gull-speckled horizon,
even his sharp intuitive cubist depth, reflecting energy, derived perhaps from the place's unrehearsed vitality. It was a most remarkable experience. Perhaps, had I taken the mail boat roundtrip, I would have seen more - weather permitting - but this view of and from the land was so incredibly exhilarating that I wanted for little else.
Another bonus was wandering into an unpretentious village cafe for breakfast; Stonington remains a bona fide lobster fishing port - the men who work it along with other locals seemed to congregate in the place, joined by travelers from various destinations, including one couple from Clearwater, Fla., another from Bethel whom I joined. Art galleries proliferate and dot the immediate Stonington village and various destinations on Deer Isle; there are many restored houses accommodating tourists, fancier restaurants than the modest café exist, rare wines are sold in shops as well as antiques and there's an interesting bookstore featuring New England titles. There's a large dock that I
don't recall from some 30 years ago, the funky old Opera House, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places has been saved and operates - the
movie "Hairspray" was the feature. Yet, for the moment, Stonington represents authentic coastal Maine, reachable by an old bridge (in repair) built sometime in the 1930s. Let's hope it defies contemporary trends and remains so.
On our return via coastal Route 1 we stopped in "the last frontier" town of Camden, found a parking place near its park-trimmed waterfront, settled at a table in a casual dockside restaurant that welcomed dogs on leashes. Our youngster was enthralled, moving from table to table, asking to pet the fluffy tail-wagging-wonders. The Camden harbor provided (in addition to million-dollar yachts!) more amusement in the form of baby ducks and mama ducks as well as gulls a-flying. Occupied during mealtime, this young one burned energy, and slept during most of the return journey to York. Later, her mother's iPod seemed to keep her restless gray matter sufficiently involved. Relieved from most en route small-fry talk and entertainment, we relaxed. Still, the next day, following her inter-generational adventure, this occasional "grandma" certainly welcomed a "do-nothing" full day at home!
