Trying to Write a Letter

One of my tasks for this week is to write my official retirement communication, to be sent out to every client. It’s essentially my last letter to the three hundred or so people who I have served for the past 42 years. As someone who has written hundreds of letters, nearly 3000 blog posts, twenty-six short stories, and am about to wrap up my fifth novel, you would think that one more letter would be a cinch. But I have set down to write it several times over the past two weeks and have come up with…nothing.

As my last day approaches I am having no second thoughts. I am making the right decision at the right time. But there is a finality looming and that is the thing  that brings all the feels. Do anything in life for 42 years, you develop a fondness for its routines and rhythms. It’s 8:35 on a Tuesday morning—you know where you’re supposed to be—pouring yourself a cup of coffee and teasing Kristin Reihl about something. You will miss the little things. You will miss that client who always calls complaining that I haven’t updated the away message on my phone. You will miss getting harassed by the client who whenever I don’t answer right away takes delight in accusing me of being on the golf course—even when it’s snowing outside. You will miss a great many small things.

My Latest Obsession

It is an extraordinarily inconvenient thing to write a book. Inspiration comes when it will, morning noon and night. When you should be focused on any number of other more pressing concerns all you can think about is the latest plot point that keeps dancing around in your head. If you’re wondering why my blogposts have been fewer and farther between lately, this is the reason. This latest flurry of inspiration began almost as soon as I arrived in Maine in mid-September and hasn’t stopped since.

I began writing this one in May of 2023. The first 12 chapters or so flowed quickly but then, as is often the case with me, the story went cold for a couple months. I wrote some more during the Spring of this year before another cold period. Although being in Maine is great on many levels, I’ve never done a ton of writing while I’m there. This fall was different. At Loon Landing there’s a loft room with a spectacular view of the lake and the most comfortable chair in the house. I would climb up there on the ladder and sit in the chair and almost immediately the words would come. They have continued to come ever since.

The story centers around a young man whose life is turned upside down by a massive inheritance from his wealthy and eccentric uncle who he hardly even knows. As the story unfolds we see how the sudden and unexpected fortune changes his life and his relationships. Hint: It’s not good! The more he learns about his Uncle the worse it gets. Eventually he begins to question everything he thought he knew about his life. The rest of the story is essentially a voyage of personal discovery that takes him to Wyoming, the Cayman Islands and eventually back home to the mountains of Smyth County, Virginia….or not, I haven’t finished it yet so I’m not entirely sure how it will end.

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. The story has been living rent-free in my head for over a year now. I have included the first paragraph of the story below for your consideration:

Stanley Randle Clyde had been on his death bed for seven months, as obstinate and unpredictable in death as he had been in life. It had started as a stubborn cough, turned into pneumonia, then morphed into a months long bout with dysentery. A lesser man might have succumbed to the pneumonia, but Clyde was no lesser man. Despite raging diarrhea and dehydration, the man had never lost his mental acuity. Up until the very end he had been able to communicate his various instructions to the nurses unlucky enough to have tended him with amazing specificity, regularly requesting particular brands of Irish whiskey to help settle his stomach. He recognized every face that had visited him during his interminable passing, being especially careful to insult each of them by bringing up their most embarrassing failure. And still they came, an unending stream of family members, to pay their respects to the great shrinking giant, hoping against hope to make one last favorable impression. This level of respect and devotion towards the dying is always reserved for one of two sorts of people—the beloved or the ridiculously wealthy. Stanley Randle Clyde was not beloved.

The Greatest Commandment

Woke up to a 39 degree morning on the lake on this our last full packing-free day in Maine for 2024. It has been a wonderful ten weeks, six over the summer and now these four in the fall. I cannot possibly express how grateful I am for the privilege I have to do this every year. Like nothing else, it restores my soul.

But as our time here draws to a close all of the troubles of the world that I have blocked out of my mind resurface— the devastation and suffering in North Carolina, the impending storm about to ravage central Florida, and the ongoing dysfunction and disinformation rampant in our politics. There are times up here where I can’t help feeling a bit guilty for my good fortune. When I consider the combination of comfort and contentment on display in this picture, it stands in sharp contrast to the catastrophic loss and suffering of so many.

But I have to remind myself that life is not a zero sum game. There isn’t a finite amount of sorrow or joy in the world where if I am joyful it means that there is less joy for others. It is quite possible to marvel at the beauty of a sunset while somewhere else in the world there are people looking at that same sun setting while hungry and besieged. The trick is retaining the empathy that allows you to look beyond your own blessings, to see the suffering of others and be moved to action. I have a cousin who has done just that. She’s a nurse who couldn’t bring herself to sit around reading about her brothers and sisters in western North Carolina without doing something. So, now she’s in the midst of the battle at an adhoc triage station somewhere in the mountains distributing supplies with a half dozen others nurses from all over the place. She and I don’t always agree on politics. We both have Dixon blood coursing through our veins, making us both impossibly opinionated. But Jennifer is by her actions putting into practice our Lord’s command to care for the least of these. When they asked Jesus which was the greatest of the Commandments his answer was beautiful in its simplicity…Love the Lord your God with all your heart soul and mind…and your neighbor as yourself. Beautiful words, for sure, but devilishly hard to put into practice.

When I get back to Short Pump there will be a lot on my plate. I have less than three months left in my business life, my forty-two year career is coming to a close. But no matter how hectic things get, I will have to find a way to contribute something to the ongoing effort to rebuild the lives torn apart by the storms. My church has already organized relief efforts. That’s where I will start.

Selective Clairvoyance

There’s a restaurant in Camden called Franny’s. The place is always packed and it gets rave reviews, but in all of our years here we had never eaten there…until last night, although it took a 5:00 reservation to pull it off and we had to eat in the outdoor tent. Our meal was wonderful…

I bring this up because several years ago I wrote a book called Saving Jack, and one of the scenes in the story takes place in this restaurant, even though I had never actually been inside the place at the time I wrote the book. The weird thing was—the inside of the place was exactly like I had imagined it in my mind. Strange.

Of course, this sort of thing has happened before with me, especially when we are watching baseball up here. I can’t tell you the number of times I have made a comment like, “This pitcher is going to throw this ball a foot outside in the dirt and this knucklehead is going to swing at it!” And then it happens. Take the Mets-Brewers game the other night. When they announced that Gary Sanchez was going to be the catcher for the Brewers I said, “That’s a mistake. He will make at least one error in this game.” Two innings in he lets a pitch through all the way to the back stop for a passed ball. In the 8th inning with one out and Pete Alonso coming to the plate for the Mets with two runners on base and the Mets behind 2-0 I announced my view that the Brewers should put him on base, set up the double play ball since Alonso was due to hit one out.” What happens? They choose to pitch to the guy, he clobbers a ball to right field for a three run homer. Then the next batter hits a ground ball to second base!!

It’s not like it’s an isolated case. On our way to town the other day we got behind a sewer pump truck on one of the ubiquitous two lane back roads almost ten miles from Camden. I made the following observation: “What do y'all want to bet that this guy is headed the same place we are?” When he finally made a different turn than us I thought I was wrong. But, ten miles later we pull into the Merry Spring Nature Center for a hike and there he is. 

Unfortunately this clairvoyance of mine does not extend to anything useful like picking lottery numbers. And if clairvoyance is the ability to perceive the future before it happens, what do you call the ability to forget important things from the past almost as soon as they happen? While I can tell you the starting lineup of the New York Mets in game five of the 1969 World Series, I can’t remember anything about the time I had shingles. I can quote a line of poetry I memorized in the 8th grade but can’t remember the name of our waitress even after she tells me the second time. I could drive from Loon Landing to any place I have ever been at least once without the aid of a GPS…but I cannot for the life of me remember where I left my keys… or my parent’s birthdays…or to take that one medicine I’m supposed to take every night. So, it’s very much a selective clairvoyance.

But the inside of that restaurant was strange—even for me!

Nothing Worse

The kids flew home today without incident. We throughly enjoyed our time with them. The weather has been wonderful. We ate marvelous food, had fun on the lake. Hated to see them leave. But now we have new guests—Ron and Paula Roop—and we are doing exactly what we always do in October here in Maine…

Playoff Baseball. It matters not who is playing. Everything is based on rooting for anything and everything that might conspire to eliminate the Yankees and/or Dodgers from advancing.

Meanwhile, Quantabacook’s mayor happens to be this guy…

He knows nothing of baseball. He only knows that his wings need some drying, and sometimes he needs to keep a sharp eye out for a certain sketchy southern fisherman who sometimes appears on his waters.

Of course, after yesterday’s performance I’m almost certain I heard the mayor snickering at my incompetence. “Is that the best you can do??” I heard him squawk. There’s nothing worse than a trash-talking eagle.

It Rained, it Poured, We Had Fun

After a 12 day no-rain streak, yesterday it poured all day. The lake desperately needed it and I can’t wait to see what the dam looks like today. But, if you think that a washout like yesterday ruined our day, think again. Here’s what we did.

We left camp around 8:30 and drove into town to the fabulous Buttermilk Kitchen for breakfast. After a breakfast that would extinguish our hunger for a full 8 hours, we putzed around shopping at The Smiling Cow and Once a Tree, two stores which we never leave without buying something. They seem to be the two browse-free zones in Camden. 

By the time we got back to camp it was really coming down, so the four of us settled down into an afternoon watching the rain pummel the lake, listening to the sounds of it pounding the metal roof, and engaging in a variety of activities. One of us worked remotely for a couple hours, another busied himself playing card games with his mother. I got in some writing. 

Later in the afternoon Pam began chopping up vegetables and gathering the ingredients for her incredible sausage and lentil soup with Red Lobster biscuits dinner. While she was doing that, I braved the elements to make the five minute drive into Searsmont to pick up four different pint-sized containers of ice cream at Fraternity. For those of you who are interested in that sort of thing, the four flavors were: butter pecan, cappuccino crunch, banana pudding, and mint moose tracks.

After dinner I lit a fire in the fireplace as the rain continued to pour. The kids then suggested we watch a movie. Thus began the most bizarre two and a half hours of my life as I experienced the indescribable Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. They tell me it won a boatload of Oscars. My brain may never recover!

So, there you have it, a rainy day at camp ended up being a relaxing, delicious and stimulating adventure.

Quiet Days

Woke up this morning to 44 degrees. I was able to catch the lake in the act of shedding its misty covering, as the slight northerly breezes ushered them down to the south end of the lake…

We might have to have our first fire in the fireplace tonight. We have entered the quiet phase of our time here. The last several days have been mostly cloudy with enough wind blowing to make spending time in a kayak or on a paddle board a bit choppy. Plus, I’ve been laying low trying to calm the muscles in my back down. It’s better this morning but still not 100%. On the other hand I can’t remember the last time my back was 100%. At least I can now put on my socks by myself. Two days ago I couldn’t!

So, my wife is semi-famous for two contradictory things, being an amazingly organized packer and forgetting the most obviously basic items. One year we arrived in Maine for 6 weeks in the summer and Pam discovered that she had left all of her bathing suits at home. Another year she forgot to bring her contact lenses. It’s a mystery. On the other hand, I am the type of packer that annoys meticulous packers like my wife. I breeze in a day before we are scheduled to leave, throw a bunch of stuff into a couple of bags and I’m done. The entire process takes me an hour or so, while Pam has been churning out spreadsheets for weeks, leaving posted-note reminders to herself all over our house. Consequently, I have endured many an eye-role over the years.

Well, this year it was me who forgot something very obvious and basic—a jacket. The next three weeks up here will have some nice days in the upper 60’s, but the trend is not our friend this time of year. Low to mid 40’s at night will be the rule rather than the exception from now on and we will have some highs in the 50’s before we are done. A few flannel shirts won’t cut it. So, today I will head into Camden and buy a jacket.

The very good news is that Patrick and Sarah will arrive in a couple more days. It has been two years since they have made it to Maine and we couldn’t be more excited to have them to ourselves in this beautiful place. We will do some sight seeing and have a field day sampling the amazing food to be had in Mid-Coast Maine with my two foodie kids. Can’t wait!