Maine is a strange place to be from. Imagine growing up inside a Norman Rockwell painting, but styled by LL Bean. It's monogrammed canvas tote bags and cross country skis, wild blueberries and bug spray. It's sailboats, it's Christmas trees, it's softball games. It's a wood burning stove, penny candy village store kind of existence.
To live year round in Vacationland, to be a full time native in a seasonal state breeds a very specific sort. There is a pride that comes with sticking out the brutal 9 month winter and a singular pleasure in rolling your eyes at the prissy out-of-towners come summer. Now I am one of the prisses.
The unofficial motto, found just over the Kittery Bridge upon entering the state says it all:
MAINE: THEY WAY LIFE SHOULD BE.
Not that is or was, just that it should. As a neurotic, allergic kid without an ounce of innate rusticness, comforted only by the thought of Greenwich Village, that notion threw me into a pint size existential crisis. WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?
The way life SHOULD be? The way LIFE should be? The way life should BE? The question becomes a horrible method actor exercise.
And sitting here at sunrise, on a perfectly New England dock, overlooking an equally ideal little lake, pondering the trip back to New York City, I'm still asking.
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