A huge orange ball bobs and floats over a New Hampshire town square, competing with the brilliant harvest moon. Night has fallen with an unlikely, unseasonable 72 degrees F, and now the Pumpkin Fest is in full swing.

Families walk around the carnival rides, games and food stands, posses of teenagers roam on the edges, while little kids dart around waving glow sticks and cotton candy. A popular local band is setting up in front of the crowd gathered around the stage on the green. I’m right up there with them.  

How did I get here, my first trip out of state in more years than I can remember? To New Hampshire? Not exactly exotic, but this night, feeling like a million miles from home. And at the same time feeling exactly like home.

I’ve landed in the middle of a large, complicated family, excited about the night, the band, even about me, the newcomer – their father/grandfather’s lady friend. We laugh, he and I, at that – LF – but it will do in the circumstances.

We’ve walked down to the festival in the dark, down a street of closely-spaced houses, a neighborhood that could be in any old New England town. Think Augusta, think Fitchburg, think Milford. Houses that have seen generations grow up, grow old and die, then be passed on to the next. The relentless remodeling/rebuilding that’s marked our midcoast towns the past few years seems to have skipped this place. I like that a lot.

Finally the band, five men on the other side of 50, takes the stage. This is Morgan’s band, original acoustic rock, and he’s the son-in-law of my friend. The whole extended family there this night to hear them play is psyched, and so am I, though I’d met them all just a couple of hours ago. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and I get to be a part of it.

Two songs into the set and people have started dancing. Morgan is ramping up the level, fist pumping, pulling the audience in.  I’d have said this music isn’t my thing, but tonight acoustic rock or whatever it is will do just fine. I join the dancers in front of the stage, though my friend’s having none of it. Yet when I turn around, there he is, up dancing too. His daughter just grins.

But there’s more. This is Columbus Day weekend, the first long weekend since school started, and the 19 year-old grandson is home from college. The house up the road from the festival is packed with his friends, a tent set up out back. I’m reminded of Main Street, Camden, on a holiday week-end when college students excitedly reunite on home ground for the first time.

A tightly folded paper in the pocket of my jeans holds the key, the family tree he patiently laid out for me the night before we came. Who’s married to whom, the names of their kids, who’s a step-kid, who’s a half-sib. There’s a step-dad, a birth dad, a set of grandparents, every single name new to me. It’s an impressive list on a 4 x 6 inch piece of paper, and I consult it frequently.

“Just wait till you get mine,” I told him when I ran out of room on the paper.

By the next day we’re home, and I’m preparing some stories to read at a Sunday afternoon program at the church. Now we’re back in my world, a singalong of early 20th Century popular songs punctuates my stories of Lincolnville’s early days, and he’s in the audience. We’ve shown up at enough places these past couple of weeks that it’s becoming obvious that we – he, a widower of a year and me, eight months after losing Wally – are finding life fun again.

We’d barely known one another six weeks ago, though we’ve lived within a mile and a half of each other for years. Wally and I knew his wife was sick, knew, of course, when she died. Of course we know these things in our small town. I may have sent a note when I heard. And then a few months later, when it was my turn, he sent me one.

He tells me I was the one who suggested, when we ran into each other somewhere this summer, that we get together for a glass of wine and talk about how rotten it is to lose your lifelong spouse. I suppose I did, but I barely remember. A couple of months passed before we had that glass (which turned into a bottle), and by then August was almost over.

We began taking walks, long woods walks, long talks sitting on logs or rocks or the banks of a stream. We got caught in the rain once and never stopped talking. We got lost in a tangled thicket another day and never stopped talking, until we finally stumbled back onto the trail. We sat on the shore near Balance Rock one long September afternoon and never stopped talking.

By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s been a beautiful fall.

The talk was mostly about our lost spouses, our lost marriages. About figuring out how – or why – to go on.

His wife, a woman I’d hardly ever spoken to, was becoming real. He wished he’d gotten to know Wally. But there’s no way to know the dead if you didn’t know them in life. She lives, always will live, in his heart, right where Wally dwells in mine.

By then there were daily emails. The best part, we agreed, was having something to look forward to. We never parted without planning the next walk, never sent a message without answering promptly. Neither of us was getting anything done, what with all this walking and talking and emailing and checking of email ….. (as I don’t have a cell, texting is out). We’d never touched, barely even brushed against each other.

I think the emails turned the tide. “What are we doing?” I wrote one day. And then we knew.

We’d say, we do say now, that we’re having fun. Meeting his family, he meeting mine, hoping everyone’s comfortable with their father and with their mother making this new relationship. A friend laughed when I told her, remembering her mother calling one day to say, “Are you sitting down? Your 78-year-old mother has fallen for an 82-year-old man!”

This is nothing like being 23 again, though at first I thought it was. No, it’s not. Life at 73 is much simpler; all the tough challenges of child-rearing and earning a living, are in the past.

Last night when I sat down to write about the path this journey of mine is taking me I hesitated, wondering if I was telling too much. TMI as my kids say, while trying to look anywhere, but at me.

Then a note from Bill McCarriston this morning brought the news that his wife, Nanci Kendall, died last Friday. Bill and Nanci have been part-time L’ville residents for a long time. His email said my pieces on grieving had given him a glimpse of what might be coming for him.

As I write this morning a K-8 Chess Tournament is going on in the art room at the school, 9 a.m. to noon.

The cross country championships will be this Wednesday, October 11 at Medomak Middle School; the boys run at 3:45, the girls at 4:30.

Plan on getting your Halloween pumpkin at the eighth grade pumpkin sale, Saturday, Oct. 14, 9 a.m. – 1p.m. across from the post office at the Beach.

The PTO will be holding a Halloween movie night, Oct. 20 6-8 p.m. in Walsh Common. Children can come in costume.

Our Lincolnville Community Library is a busy place this week:

This Wednesday, Oct. 11, 7 p.m. Waldo County Probate Court Judge Susan Longley will be at the Library with a Probate Basics workshop. Susan will explain the steps in organizing an advance directive for health care and a financial power of attorney. She’ll also have the relevant Maine forms to give out. While she’ll be able to answer general questions she can’t give specific legal advice. She welcomes group participation, and said she has found that workshop attendees often volunteer great ideas on handling delicate family matters, including helping other family members respect and honor the wishes expressed in one’s legal documents.The talk is free, all welcome.

The library is starting a writing group and those who attended the first meeting last week decided to meet again this Friday, October 13 from 9 to 11 a.m. Anyone is welcome to join, meeting the second and fourth Friday morning of each month. The group can share what they’ve written and offer each other constructive comments, as well as doing some writing during meetings in response to prompts and share articles, books and ideas on writing in general. For more information email.

 The Craft and Fiber Sale on Saturday, October 14 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at both 208 and 209 Main Street (the Library and the Boat Club) will have a wonderful variety of yarns, fabrics, sewing notions, and accessories such as embroidery hoops and needlepoint frames. And there will be a great selection of books on all types of needlework plus knitting, quilting and other patterns. 

 Plan to stop by the Library on Saturday to help celebrate the five-year anniversary of the day in 2012 when community members pulled the old schoolhouse across Main Street. See the wonderful video made that day and enjoy, as at every Lincolnville event, cookies and fresh cider.