One winter on the coast of Maine

 

We lived (for those months) toward the end of a long tapered peninsula. The land was so narrow where the house stood that from every window there was a view of water. The house was built over 50 years before, on the crest of the hill. It had a wonderful porch on the front and the back. It smelled like ocean and worn-out wood floors and wood stoves burning and cold glass windows. We lived there---well, I lived there with him and with his roommates. I was 18 years old and he was 20. That seems young now, but youth---age---is so relative. I thought he was old because he had been at college for four years and would be graduating. I was young, because I had just arrived and hadn't even obtained a driver's license yet. 

I had been discontent in general and then I met him, and, suddenly, I was completely content. One night in the freezing winter of Maine, at one party, everything changed. What had been a grey and white, meaningless landscape was now a campus and a winter seeped in beauty and color. I was amazed at my good fortune to have this happen, and I kept quiet for fear that words would scare it away. 

All the time that winter we would stay up all night talking. The sun rose over the slate-blue bay out the window. The rising sun began with a strip of orange that burned above the pine trees across the bay. All night, talking and smoking and talking and smoking and then it was morning. I had found it very difficult to step into the waters of college life. In the years following that first year, I would often try and fail to enter the rhythm. I could feel the swarming around me; I was aware of the structures and ceremonies and repetitions and camaraderie, but I could so rarely participate. I couldn't find the entry point, perhaps. I couldn't make it happen.

He was in a band and played the guitar so well. Everyone marveled. Usually the band played at fraternity parties or college weekend things, but one night he played at Morton Hall. We drove into campus after dinner (which felt backward and adult), and he set up and they played. After, in the colonial room with the busts of college presidents, and elegant side tables, the niches with vases of flowers and the smell of formality, everyone was in a great mood and drinking wine. It was a clean, well-lit room and the conversation was fun and giddy. And when we drove home it felt like a different night from when we drove in. It felt cleansed. A full moon made the landscape absolutely shimmer in blues and silver, and just before we reached the house we pulled over and watched the moon over the bay.

Imagine. It's been over 20 years. I'm trying to think if I've pulled over to gaze at a moon or at a bay since then. 

"Island Painting" by Margaret Sweet. Text (inspired by the painting) by Emilie Oyen. 

Comments

[Michelle]

I remember those heady days of early adulthood when we would stay up all night and drink wine and smoke and talk. What happened to those? Yes, we're older and have to wake up in the morning, but every once in awhile you'd think we could make it happen. Sigh.