IMPULSIVITY

My family thinks that I am an impulsive person. Lord knows that's not always a good thing. There have been times in my life when I have looked back on situations that I have found myself in and felt like beating myself over the head with my impulsivity. I made a decision today that I will spend Mother's day with my 87 year old mother no matter what happens with my responsibilities here at home. The ocean is calling me and I must go.

I have many loves. The love of Roger, my family, and....the ocean. I love to go back where I started from.

The house in this picture is owned by Summer people but back in the day a little old lady we called "Aunt Lo" lived there and there was a pier in front of her house that had a building on the end of it. Her late husband's fishing "shop" where he would bring his lobster boat to load up his traps, etc. 

Roger and I bought a 27 foot travel trailer (the English would call it a caravan) shortly after we were married almost 9 years ago now. We parked it in a permanent set up off to the side of my parent's driveway. They still live in the family home on an island off the coast of Maine. We hooked up to their water, electric and septic. I call it my NEST. I love being back to where I have a lot of memories. Through the years I have blocked out the bad times and enhanced the good times.  A footpath goes down to this beach that's in the pictures shown above.  In my childhood I swam here with the neighborhood kids. We jumped off the big rock in the second picture when the tide was up around it and only the top was showing.  We skipped rocks and at low tide we hunted little rock crabs. My dad was a lobster fisherman when I was very young and he would take us out to his "power boat" at a mooring a ways off this beach in his rowboat. We would load it up with everything we would need for a family picnic on one of the uninhabited islands that dot the coastline of the Penobscot Bay. It was always on a Sunday after church. My grandparents, my parents, my 2 brothers and myself. Oh, we would have so much fun! Exploring and swimming. Building a fire out of driftwood. On the way to the island my dad would haul some of his lobster traps or pots until we had enough lobsters and crabs to have a nice feast. We would dig some clams and have steamers first, dipping them in the clam bouillon to wash the grit off and then in the melted butter. Yum. How I wish I had some photos of those years living just a stone's throw from this beach. Alas, my parents didn't own a camera nor do I think they missed having one. As I grew into an adolescent our lives changed drastically from those carefree days. My parents opened a restaurant and there were no more picnics.

This bridge connects our Island to the mainland. It's pretty old now so there's always work being done on it. It's one of the few expansion bridges left in Maine. There was one in Bucksport, about 40 minutes from this one but it became unsafe and they now have a new and impressive replacement with an observation tower.

You can still see the old expansion bridge beside it. The last time I went across the new bridge it looked like they were starting to dismantle it.

These are typical scenes  in the fishing harbors around the Island in the Summer. A happy sharing of mooring space between the fisherman and the "summer people".

Blessings until next time!