Monday, August 12, 2013

Stage One: Gorham, ME

At the end of June the kids and I went to Maine. I had flown solo with Anatole several times when he was an infant, so I thought I knew a thing or two about traveling alone with kids. I was wrong, it turns out that I only knew about the peaceful experience of traveling alone with kid, singular, and the overnight cross-country version was an eye-opening experience, so to speak. To be fair, they both behaved extraordinarily well, I felt so lucky, I just did not in any way have enough hands or eyes to get the job done with much dispatch.

But we arrived, gleefully, into the arms of one of my best friends and her darling little boy in their sweet home in Gorham. I am not much of a photojournalist, I tend to only take my camera out (in real life) when there is not much going on, so I miss a lot. I'll have to tell the story, then.

Our first day, we took the ferry out to Peak's Island. It was very windy, which Anaiah loved.

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The boy lost his hat shortly after this photo was taken:

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I actually briefly contemplated whether there was a way for me to fish it out. Crazy person. Then we hit land again and away went the camera in favor of ice cream and sand and an illogically cranky toddler. Just when we hit our stride and were truly relaxing it was time to dash back to the ferry and console ourselves with delicious pizza.

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I love this place, but then so does everyone so I don't know if I'm allowed to say that I love it... New from when we were last here (I think, feel free everyone to tell me how wrong I am) was this 'Before I die I Want to Have..."chalkboard wall. A cute concept, but it was oddly irksome to me because it just wound up reading like everyone's Twitter feeds that you never wanted to read. I think that we are far, far too practiced now at writing anonymous sound bytes for public consumption. Being overly clever/zany/heartfelt/sarcastic/edgy/philosophical just doesn't pack the same wallop that it used to. And of course someone had already taken my stock überlazy reply of "lived" so I was just so over it.

But this was a hiccup, a minor glitch like the hat overboard. We cavorted, we were on vacation and it was stretched out before us like a long, smooth sunlit road.

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(Hint, foreshadowing.) Roughly an hour later, just after we returned to Jane's house, my lovely, vibrantly happy little boy broke both bones of his right forearm. I didn't take pictures of that either. I also somehow didn't just lean over and vomit up the sickening desperate feeling gripping my gut at the sight of the wrong wrong wrong oxbow in his slender wrist. I gathered him up and ushered everyone back into the car and we drove back to Portland to sample of their emergency medical care. I've had better nights, but morning always shows up again and after all, we still had a vacation to attend to.

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We spent the rest of ours days with Jane in some welcome R&R, chasing chickens and picnics and watching the bullfrogs. Then it was time to move on to Stage Two, where I'll see you again soon.

2 comments:

  1. Ahhh, so much boy in that boy. Rite of Passage #1 down, and while vacation is not a fun time to be down and out, at least you had nowhere you had to be and could focus on healing. He looks awfully cute in that cast.

    Hope we can see you guys soon for some Oregon woods frolicking!

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    1. Yes, please! Tiny casts are really flippin cute, and once he had recovered from the trauma and late night it slowed him down not at all. And they heal so fast!

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