We made it home safe and sound to our beloved steam bath of Short Pump on Saturday afternoon. The battery in my Cadillac was dead. While removing the many sticks and pine cones which covered my yard while we were away, sweat dropped from the end of my nose like a leaky faucet. When we arrived at the Lodge yesterday morning for church, we were told—cheerfully—that the AC was “struggling a bit.” Now, this morning at 6:40, there are five men stomping atop our house ripping our 28 year old roof apart. There are gigantic tarpaulins draped over the shrubs and large hulking pieces of shingles raining down from the sky. Each of these five men are wearing long pants with long sleeved hooded sweatshirts. In a few hours it will be a 94 degree sauna out there.
Why did we come home again??
I’ll tell you why we came home. Because we love this place. We have been the only people to ever live in this house. This is where we put down roots in the world. This is where we raised our kids. Our lives have been planted in this soil for nearly three decades.
And then there’s the matter of our neighbors. The photograph attached to this post is what greeted us after Saturday’s 9 hour drive. I can picture Jamie and the girls on their knees in their back yard driveway painting the letters. It’s happened many times over the years…we arrive home after 6 weeks in Maine and they have plastered some sort of creative welcome home message somewhere on the property. At some point this week we will go next door and give the kids their Maine presents. Years ago they were easy to shop for, now they are all so damned grown up it’s much more difficult. Next year there will be a new family living there. I’m sure they will be lovely, but I’d rather not think about that right now.
Later this morning I will be making my way over to the Cafe at Hope. That’s another thing I’ve missed, that place and those people.
So, as much as we love Maine, as important as our time there is to us each year, home is always here, waiting for us. We slip back into it like a silk glove.
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