Decisions

This weekend was not a typical Maine escape. In some ways it doesn’t even feel like I’m in Maine yet. First of all, we’re staying in what the kids are fond of calling a tiny house. When I say “tiny” I mean that its so small I can’t brush my teeth in the tiny bathroom unless the door is open! I have to lower my head to walk out onto the deck, the sliding glass door apparently not made for anyone over 5’8”. No, this weekend has been full of the sorts of things I usually come to Maine to escape...decisions.

It occurs to me that my life has passed through several phases. Yours has too if you think about it. To everything there is a season, is how the old prophets described it. For me, the first phase lasted until I graduated from college. I was a kid, largely dependent upon my parents for guidance, food and shelter. Then I became an adult, a free man, responsible for his own care and feeding. I had to find a job, find a place to live, buy car insurance, learn how to live on a budget. Thankfully, those dreadful years of being a lonely free agent ended when I married the beautiful, and beguiling Pamela Jean White. I was still an adult, doing all those scary adult things, but now I had this amazing women doing it along with me. That lasted for three years, then kids arrived, which launched the two of us into the longest phase of life...parenthood. This phase was spectacularly expensive and exhausting in every possible way, but it was—and remains—the greatest thing we have ever done. However, eventually our living breathing tax deductions transitioned into adults themselves, leaving us empty-nesters...our current life phase. Now, we find ourselves on the cusp of the next stage of life...retirement, or something approximating retirement. In my line of work, it’s complicated.

To that end, we have spent the past two days and nights searching for what we have been dreaming of for the past decade, the perfect lake house in Maine. Our plan has always been to buy a place when we were ready, once we could A. Afford it and B. Have the time to enjoy it. Once we buy the place, life will change for us. Our intention is to live here from the first of June through the end of September every year. That is a significant life change, one which we are very excited to begin. But it comes with more questions than answers. We have found a place that seems almost too good to be true, but is located an hour and forty minutes away from the part of the State of Maine which has our heart, Mid Coast, Camden/Rockland. This place is in the DownEast area of the state, 55 minutes from Bar Harbor/Acadia, 25 minutes from the town of Ellsworth—which is no Camden. 

We know Camden like the back of our hand. We know the best places to eat, we know the sites to see and the best places to shop. Ellsworth might as well be Mars. So the question is, do we wait to find a place in our favorite stomping grounds where the lakes aren’t as plentiful and the houses are more expensive, or do we start this next phase of life in a completely new place, almost two additional hours away from Short Pump?

So, my mind is racing. Whenever big decisions loom on the horizon, I find myself retreating into humor, sometimes dark humor. It has been this way all of my life. Perhaps it’s my way of dealing with pressure and uncertainty, my subconscious strategy for self preservation. Whatever the reason, these cartoons have been quite helpful of late...