And Up the Coast A Bit, Falling in Love Some More

It's time for a side trip from Boston and we decide to head up the coast to New Hampshire and a bit of southern Maine. Our first stop is Portsmouth, once a bustling port and shipbuilding city, now a thriving town of diverse shops and businesses where you can still see remarkable examples of Colonial, Georgian, and Federal style architecture. We walk along the Piscataque River and look at the restored houses of Strawberry Banke, then spend the night at an inn across the drawbridge in Kittery, Maine, whose proprietors Nat and Lynne serve blintz soufflé for breakfast, fresh watermelon garnished with cilantro, and ice-cold apricot nectar.

Fortified and in fine spirits, we explore the neighborhood. I love the wooden houses with their narrow windows and peeling paint. They are houses with history, houses that hold stories -- even the neglected ones have a certain dignity. We try to decipher the faded traces of letters from a long-ago sign on the side of an old brick building. There's a white-steepled church with a wreath on the door, a little gallery of local crafts, and a chocolate shop unfortunately closed. I admire Lynne’s lovingly tended garden and she presents me with a daffodil as we say good-bye.

We pass through less picturesque places also, the tattered ones that speak of disappointment, unkempt but no longer wild: weathered camper shells and crippled motorcycles, Dunkin’ Do-Nuts and Dress Barns, “plus-size scrubs” and snowmobile crossings, ragtag flea markets and rummage sale furniture heaped helter skelter in front yards.

You can tell when you’re entering tourist territory. Everything is suddenly cute and spruced up. But I relish it all, especially in this pre-season lull. The docent in the Brick Store Museum on Main Street in Kennebunk gives us a personal tour. She is skin, bone, and spirit, a bit of Maine history herself, and she tells the stories of each artifact in the exhibit as though they involved her uncles and aunts.

There’s a churchyard across the street where 18th century tombstones lean within sight of the preschool sandbox and bright blue plastic children's chairs. There’s a tall white steeple with a bell made by Paul Revere topped by a weather vane that glints in the sunlight. There’s a library and a town hall, the good bricks of democracy -- and an ice cream shop down the street.

Monte watches the ocean at every opportunity, amazed that no one is surfing. “See how that wave keeps going and going? It’s exactly what someone would want,” he explains. I just have to take his word for it. Last month an unusual storm brought huge waves and flooding to this area; even now, workers are out with heavy equipment repairing damage done to the seawall and patching up roads before summer begins.

We drive to Ogunquit, a place I would never consider in “peak season” but it’s just empty streets and closed up shops this evening. The hotel that catches my eye is a sprawling Victorian white frame building that has seen better days, but I am ridiculously charmed when the desk clerk hands me the key: yes, an actual key, not a card, and it’s attached to a red plastic tag that has our room number engraved on it and the words: “Drop in any mailbox”. I wish I'd taken a picture of it.

An astro-turfed porch wraps around the building and there’s a cavernous lobby downstairs that houses writing desks, shelves of musty books, an inexplicable antique sewing machine, and even a piano -- a sign above the keyboard implores guests to refrain from playing it before 10 a.m. “Oh, play away if you want to, any time,” says the clerk grandly.

“Where should we park?” I ask him.

“Pretty much anyplace,” he replies, “Look, I don’t wanna freak you out, but you’re the only guests.”

Wow. It makes me giddy. I picture us running naked through the corridors, or playing the piano in the middle of the night, maybe stitching up a bustle or two on that old Singer. And this would certainly be the perfect setting for an epic game of hide and seek.

We will do nothing of the sort, of course, but it’s fun to imagine we might. Well, okay. I admit I later find an open door down the hall from our room that leads to a small balcony; I step onto it and stand there for awhile, smelling the sea and the cool Maine night. I guess that’s me living dangerously. And it's a fine moment.

Matthew Fox, a well-known theologian and priest, has written about the spiritual journey that begins with a new commandment: Thou shalt fall in love at least three times a day. He doesn’t mean romantic love of course, but a love and appreciation that extends to plants, animals, art, human beings very different from ourselves, even the stars in the galaxy. In her book, Writing Toward Home, Georgia Heard tells how she applies Fox’s commandment to her writing and her life. “I’m in love with this light and everything the sun brushes," she declares, "I look around for what else I can fall in love with. The tulips, orchids, and roses in water buckets, and the man who tends them—changing water and snipping buds. Inside, the market walls are stacked high with vegetables – unhusked corn, ripe tomatoes, the green and red next to each other make my eyes dance. I find myself whistling above the noise as I walk home carrying two heavy bags.”

And oh, I know exactly what she means.