The smell in the air this morning reminded me so hard of Maine that I got instant homesickness. Crisp, with a hint of grass clippings, and slightly damp (the neighbor's sprinklers were on). I actually had to pause for a second. My chest got tight, and I could feel pricks of water starting behind my eyelids. A happy yet painful feeling. It's amazing how quickly scents in the air will transport me directly to a place, time, season or memory. Sometimes I don't even realize what triggers it. All of a sudden I'll find myself thinking of the Eastern Promenade (home of the much-photographed Portland Head Lighthouse, or the "Head Light", as the locals call it), not realizing that the smell of wet rocks is what set me off. My ties to Maine are so deep that I can close my eyes and be there. I can hear the waves crashing on the rocks at Fort Williams. I can see the late afternoon light muting the colors of the beach at Pine Point. I can hear the rattle of the wooden bridge a quarter of a mile away from Grammy's house, as I sit in the soft grass under the poplar tree in the front yard. And I can hear her yelling from the house, telling me to get the hell up off the wet grass, damn fool kid, before I ruin my pants.~grin~ I miss my Grammy.
I'm not blessed with a particularly vivid memory, except when it comes to Home. I really can't believe how vivid my recollections are, and I'm insanely grateful for that. Marie's dying to have a Christmas in Maine. She has visions of a fire in the fireplace, and snowball fights, and building snowmen, and coming back in all rosey-cheeked, and sleigh rides in a sleigh all lit up with Christmas lights. It wouldn't be impossible to make this happen for her, and us. Just a little convincing of the X(f) to let her have Christmas away from her. Maybe next year (yeah, right). Anyway, all these things I had, growing up. It didn't take Christmas to experience those things (fortunately - I missed out on a lot of Christmases), just winter. As in SNOW. Christmas in Arizona is a surreal experience for me. We'll be cooking lobsters (our traditional Christmas dinner since our funny little family got together - if you can't bring the girl to Maine, you can bring Maine to the girl!) on gas burners out on our patio. It'll probably be in the 60's or 70's. Christmas lights will blink barrenly against stucco and cacti alike (Christmas lights on a cactus is just fundamentally WRONG). Winter Wonderland becomes something to sigh over, not something to curse (as you shovel three feet of snow off your windshield, and give up parking in the driveway because the car won't make it up the ice-covered hill).
Okay, so there are *some* things I don't miss about Maine.
I think one of the things I miss most about living in Maine is the quiet. If you're not *making* any noise, there *is* no noise. It thrilled me to death last summer, when Calvin and the kids and I went back to Maine for a visit, to hear a whippoorwill (Latin name Caprimulgus vociferus - that "vociferus" cracks me up) as I was falling asleep the first night there. They sound just like their name, "WHip-poor-WILL! WHip-poor-WILL!" in a one-twothree beat. LOUD. Insanely loud. I used to hear them (and occasionally hate them) every night as a child, and I didn't realize how much I'd missed them until one started up in the woods behind the house, that night. I reclined in bed with my chin on the sill, staring out into the night, taking deep breaths of that fragrant air, and listening. The frogs sang a chorus in the pond "out back", and the crickets cricked, and the owls whoo-whoo'ed, and... gee, all of a sudden it's *noisy*. Heh, I can put up with that kind of noise.
And, oh, the *stars*. Every year in late August I would invite a friend or two to spend the night, and we would lay out on blankets in the front yard and watch the annual meteorite show. It would be all over the news for a day or two in advance, so we'd have time to get our plans made. You can see forever up into the sky. The Milky Way is a smokey streak, and the North Star is so bright it dims the stars around it. During a full moon you can drive with no headlights - and let me just mention that streetlights are rare creatures in the backwoods roads of where I come from. When there's no moon, it's darker than anyplace (outside) on Earth. Even starlight makes a bit of a difference. But when it's overcast at night, you can't see your hand in front of your face. Which fact freaked Marie out to the point that she refused to stay in the tent my Grandmother had set up for them in the backyard. Of course, it didn't help that the Blair Witch Project was out just then (and Calvin and Michael were threatening to enact a nighttime attack on the tent-ees).
Fall is incredible. You've never seen colors in nature like these before. My grandmother and I used to go (with various relatives - those were interesting) on foliage drives, winding our way through little Maine villages and taking Scenic Route 1 up the coast. She probably still has the dozens of school-age art projects constructed of paste, macaroni noodles, and colored leaves. As a toddler I would bring her and my mother every "pritty leef" I could get my chubby hands on. They'd get all dried out and crumple to dust, making messes everywhere. But I'd keep on doing it, every year. Heck, I'd still be doing it, if there were such a thing as foliage in this STUPID DESERT.My head is jam-packed full of three million details I could write about, regarding my childhood and my favorite places and my memories of Maine. They crowd around in my head and get pretty noisey at times - like today. That's when they're likely to pop out and land as an entry. Plus, I got a plea from Viv to provide some details. I've got tons of pictures I'd love to tie into my entries, but none of them are in digital form. Have I mentioned my desire for a scanner in, oh, the last *hour*? I just can't describe the place to it's full potential. I need visual aides, dammit.
Speaking of pictures, I did some more toying with Photoshop last night. The pictures are coming out darker on my website than they looked in Photoshop. How do they look to you, if you wouldn't mind giving me feedback? Then I can remember to make things look a little lighter in Photoshop so they come out normal on the Web. Also, see those groovy Maine pictures up there? How the heck do I make the text *wrap around* 'em? (10/10 update - Viv straightened me out - thanks, dear! Doesn't that look better? I like doing it that way much better than using tables.) Okay, that's all the technical goo for today...
