We’re Goin’ to Maine

There is something that I have noticed about being married and that is that human beings have a tendency to drift apart. It seems hardwired into our DNA. The extreme version of this tendency is captured in the phrase, Familiarity Breeds Contempt. This drifting is one of the things that successful marriages find a way to overcome. Every marriage needs to find something that transcends the drifting, the indifference that can so easily creep into even the most solid of relationships. For Pam and me that transcendent thing is…Maine.

She started it. She was born there. She had the history in her bones and blood. For me, I had it thrust upon me. It was an acquired taste. But, because I loved her, I was curious enough to give it a try. Although my first trip up there was while we were still dating and got off to a famously horrible start, in the first light of my very first day there, I was hooked. I had never seen so beautiful a place as Webb Lake in Weld, Maine. Thus began a 39 year streak of annual summer visits. Burdened by a two year old and a newborn? No problem. Stick them in their car seats at 7:00 at night and drive straight through the night to get there so we can live in a tent for a week. I’m sure that sounds positively dreadful to anyone reading this who has or has ever had a two year old and a newborn, but in a miraculous way…every word of it is true.

Over fifty years ago, when my wife and her sister Sharon would lay awake in bed the night before leaving for Maine, they started something that has survived all these years, handed down to us and even to my own children. They would lay in the darkness, giddy with excitement, and whisper to each other the enchanting incantation, “We’re goin’ to Maine…we’re goin’ to Maine.”  Patrick and Kaitlin took it up when they were little. “We’re goin’ to Maine…” Now, fifty years later, Pam comes down the steps after her morning shower, sees me sitting on the sofa and whispers across the room, “We’re goin’ to Maine.”

Maine has united the two of us over the years. It’s become something that both of us have a passion for. In so doing it has brought us closer together. We share a love for the place. We both know that no matter how difficult life gets…We’re goin’ to Maine. When we get there, it starts to change us. We feel different, eventually we start to look different. Then we start noticing each other again. We remember why it is that we love each other. Being there brings out the best in us and stops the drifting dead in its tracks. Never is my wife more beautiful than when she is on her paddle board. Never am I so content as I am having my morning coffee on the dock.

So, for all of my married friends out there, find a Maine. Search for a transcendent place or thing that unites you. Then, make it yours.

We’re goin’ to Maine!!