“Write what you know” is silly advice for fiction, but might work for slice-of-life, so I’ll try using this space to write about something I can craft honest words about: what it’s like to be a mid-50s Gen X’er who pulled up roots (twice) to “adopt” the state of Maine.
First things first: I love living here.
Lots of people bang on about their “beautiful” state. Maybe they’re kidding themselves, maybe not. But Maine is objectively in-your-face beautiful. Fittingly, the state’s informal nickname is “Vacationland”, the small print being that “Vacation” season is a strictly May to October affair. Seasonal or not, however, Maine’s geography — its Nature — is on point.
As is so often the case, the x-factor of a place isn’t the land, it’s the people. Maine’s populace is relatively sparse compared to the rest of the country and, as the local media is fond of reminding us, rapidly “aging”. Still, I’m hardly alone here. Minus the regional dialects and understandable wariness of would-be carpetbaggers, the people I’ve met so far are pretty much like people you’d find anywhere else — a spectrum that runs from perfectly lovely to perfect shit-heel. Humans, in other words.
I do note a few persistent, recurring character traits, however:
Mainers prefer to mind their own beeswax, almost to a fault. As a local once put it to us: if you’re about to fall into a ditch, a Mainer probably won’t warn you about it, but he’ll be there to help pull you out if you do. This fluid blend of self-sufficiency and seemingly random surges of empathy may take some getting used to.
Mainers, by and large, favor comfort over fashion. Style is largely incidental here. Long-ass winters consume, thus define, most of the state’s identity. L.L. Bean still flourishes throughout the state, and locals wear hardy, rustic things like “Bean Boots” with zero irony — present company included. Cozy > Couture. Sorry/Not Sorry, Otho.
3) Mainers are Mainers — You’re not. That line from the highly-quotable Jaws applies here: “You’re not born here, you’re not an islander. That’s it.”
Maine isn’t an island, but I recognize the Amity ethos lurking at its core. Local comedian Tim Sample famously distilled the three types of people found in Maine as ‘Natives, Transplants, and people ‘From Away’.
Tim, like most Mainers I’ve met, is congenial about it. “Now, there’s nothing wrong with anybody in any of them three categories,” he explains. “It’s fine. The trouble comes in when folks that’s in one category, they try to... slide over into the other category.”
That still holds true. And don’t think you can lean on tenure or decades-long family ties either. Of course, you can trust Tim to put it more colloquially.
There is perhaps one other thing worth mentioning, if only because I haven’t forgotten about reading it myself:
Do NOT fuck with a Mainer’s French Fries. Jesus.
So, no, I’ll never be a native, but that’s fine. Truly.
I’ll say this much, though:
Sometimes living here feels a bit like a childhood I’ve never had but can re-live as an adult. I suspected there was an elegant word for it in German, and there is: Amemoia — nostalgia for a life you’ve never lived, or could not (yet) know.
For me, this curious sensation of vicarious nostalgia, this brief but palpable wave of Amemoia, is often strongest when I stand in line for an ice cream ‘Nor’easter’ shake from Red’s, or whenever we visit Two Lights State Park and I find myself once more scaling jagged coastal rocks to reach my observation “spot”: a small natural pedestal that rises just a few feet above the waves and offers an unfettered view of the cold, beautiful Atlantic ocean that stretches far beyond me and my little ruminations.
Admittedly, I don’t always go out quite that far (I’m lazy, as I’ve said), and sometimes high tide overtakes my spot for a time. But good luck to anyone trying to pull me away once I’m out there, staring at the sea — “brooding”, I’m told. Living a life that feels like someone else’s, but might yet be mine.
