Notes from Maine - 2026/03/08
I’ve been dwelling in the past a little this week. Sometimes I like to go through old pictures so I can put memories in order. They tend to shuffle. I’ll think about a summer when I went to the beach with my sister and nephew and then about a visit from my cousins. I have to think hard in order to remember which came first.
My brother stopped by the other day and wanted to see some pictures that my grandparents took in Aruba. At least I think it was Aruba—I could be wrong about that. We found the photos in a bin where I store all those old albums. I found another book that had photos of my father and his brother when they were young. These were photos that I don’t remember looking at before. I would have to line them up with my father’s account of where he lived through his childhood in order to really put them in context. Maybe I’ll do that next week.
I don’t take enough photos of people. I tend to take a million photos of projects that I’m working on. A lot of the time they’re just so I can remember where in the wall a particular pipe runs, or which wires connect to what. But occasionally I’ll run into a burst. In the library they’re all tagged with time and date so I can remember that my good friend was in the hospital for heart surgery days after my father went to a different hospital for his hernia. Then, a couple months later, Earl (horse) was born and I met him for the first time when he was so little you could put him in your pocket. It’s nice to have that timeline and shocking that all those events happened so close together. In my memory the really big things need more space than that—especially with people the world has lost. Some of them deserve a whole year to themselves.
It takes a while before I want to look at a photo of someone I’ve lost. They have to move from my everyday memory until they’re safely tucked in a nostalgic corner of my mind. Then I can remember the good times. Seeing a photo too soon is like opening up a wound that’s trying to heal. If I keep picking at it, it’s likely going to get infected, take longer to close, and leave a big scar. I guess that means I don’t have the best relationship with loss.
“May their memory be a blessing,” is a wonderful sentiment but it reminds that the opposite can also be true. There’s a time of grief when having a clear memory is a curse. You look back on a time and remember thinking, “I never want this moment to end.” Of course it did, and here we are. There are more wonderful moments happening right now and plenty more to come in the future, but some of the cherished times can never be repeated.
Jenny Lou Carson was about 30 years old when she wrote “I’d trade all of my tomorrows (for just one yesterday)” in 1946. She lived another 30 years after that. I bet she didn’t mean it—if you listen to the recording she sounds wistful, but not truly sad. What 30-year-old can predict what the coming decades will bring? I guess that’s a young-person’s sentiment, although I bet that Jenny knew a lot about the world by the time she was 30. She was divorced twice by the time she wrote that song.
I like a good annual tradition, and my photo album shows that clearly. Each year in March we have a grilled cheese dinner party. Every fall we have a couple of large gatherings with old friends. We used to have carnivals every couple of years, but unfortunately those have fallen off. Maybe I should establish more annual traditions to look forward to, but they take up a lot of mental energy. Having an upcoming deadline forces me to organize my thoughts in a way that feels limiting.
Even a tiny thing—like the dentist appointment I have on Tuesday—makes me think twice every time I go to eat something right now. I don’t want to have popcorn the day before or blueberries the morning of my cleaning. I know that Donna is fully capable of cleaning my teeth either way, but I hate to make things harder than they need to be. After the dentist the horses have a hoof appointment on Thursday, so I need to be extra diligent about keeping the mud out of their feet this week. That will be difficult since the entire pasture is currently composed solely of snow and mud.
I think I’ll try to schedule more things and take more photos. Maybe I can dilute the effect they have on me if I just have more of those things in my life.
