“Watch this,” my father said, “I can pull up a tree with my bare hands.” And he proceeded to pluck a tiny elm seedling from the bed of petunias he was weeding. I’d only been fooled for minute. Even at five I wasn’t that gullible, though I imagined only my father could have thought up that clever trick.

 That memory popped into my head the other morning as Fritz and I strode along our regular route to Maplewood Cemetery and back. It was a morning full of surprises: we scared up a turkey lurking in the underbrush right next to the road (or rather it scared the bejeebus out of us), then Fritz got a good look at a deer crossing ahead of us, though I only got a glimpse of its white flag of a tail disappearing into the woods. It was hard to contain his excitement at the other end of the leash.

 A few minutes on and a coyote family began raising a ruckus somewhere up in the hills, maybe on Frohock or Derry just down from our house. Their shrill barks, yips and howls echoed back and forth for several minutes. Lately, they’ve been more circumspect, rarely letting loose with such chatter, as if reluctant to let us know how close they are to us humans.

 Finally, a male cardinal, perched at the very top of a tall oak, called over and over for a mate, or maybe he was just feeling full of himself, all brilliant red among the brilliant green leaves against the brilliant blue of the sky. After all, there’s nothing shy about a cardinal.

 Meanwhile, I’m working out where that seedling tree memory came from. Okay, it was Father’s Day or thereabouts, but that was only a coincidence.

 Ah yes, I’d pulled up a weed in my friend’s garden the day before, and to our surprise it was attached to a beech nut, apparently a seedling of his ancient copper beech trees. We hastily replanted it, as it’s the first he’s ever noticed, progeny of those massive trees that pre-date him, that have been growing in front of his house all his life.

These are the things that occupy my mind these days.

 It’s a solitary mind, one with plenty of time on its hands, so to speak, still getting used to being a single. After 50 years of constant companionship, of conversation, of sharing, it’s a big adjustment to find yourself all alone with your own thoughts.

 Of course, I’m far from alone with a boisterous family of five living directly overhead, and yes, my son, wife and three kids finally moved in a couple of weeks ago. Most of the time their presence is background noise; they’re off to school and work early, then gone until late afternoon. Footsteps, sounds of distant chatter, an occasional visit – “Grammy, can I come in?”, the upstairs lighted up when I come home late.

 But where once I had no secret thoughts, no impulses that weren’t immediately shared, there’s now only me. More than that, the certainty of that presence, that person who was my other half, is missing. For all the years of our marriage each morning started with the predictable: the easy conversation that needed no explanation, knowing his body as well as my own, the regular rhythm of our days.

 These days are different.

 This isn’t completely unpleasant. Like everything about the year and a half since my husband died there are some surprisingly good changes. Once I accepted (six months or more into it) that he would not be coming back, that my life as a wife was over, I started looking ahead. Learning to live as a single became a challenge.

 Who doesn’t want to be happy, to feel good most of the time?

 The biggest surprise of all has been the relationship with someone just down the road, someone who’s been there all along, as bonded to his lifelong partner as I’d been and feeling her loss as profoundly. We’re grateful every day for each other. Happily, we find so much more to talk about this summer than our loss.

So what’s this second summer without Wally like? If I think back to a year ago, he’s not there; he’d already been dead six months. Time builds its own barrier to memory. The triggers of the early months, those moments when a song or a smell or a well-worn pair of shoes brought predictable tears have lessened. Now it’s his absence, the space that was him, that I feel the most, and it comes almost every day, usually at the end of the day, when work is done, the time we’d sit down together and take stock.

 I’m learning to let that feeling in, to sit with it, to acknowledge it. And then to get up and go out and …. what? Weed the carrots, check on the chicks, plan the next day or maybe just play a few hands of cards with the fellow down the road.

Schoolhouse Museum Opens This Week

School

Congratulations to the following May Students of the Month: Kindergarten, Oren Hurley, Mckenna Fogg and Oliver Brenton; First Grade, Malcolm Joseph and Baylee Emery; Second Grade, Maia Andrews, Violet Prime and Chase McLaughlin; Third Grade, Noah Seliger, Olivia Blake and Zach Egeland; Fourth Grade, Abby Strout and Liana Talty; Sixth Grade, Hayden Davis and Mateo LaChance.

Last Friday and Saturday a dozen LCS student boarded the Quicksilver and traveled to Eagle Island in East Penobscot Bay for the culminating activity of a year-long study of the bay, its islands, lighthouses, geography, and ecology. The overnight trip to the island included a beach cleanup, a visit to the original one-room schoolhouse, an evening of story-telling and a 4:30 a.m. wake up to watch the sunrise over the island lighthouse.

Eighth grade graduation is this Wednesday, June 20, 5:30 p.m. Congratulations to the newly-minted high school freshmen!

The book group meets Tuesday, June 19 at 6 p.m. to discuss The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss which portrays the keys players in the women’s suffrage movement, and presenting both sides of the arguments and challenges faced by the suffragettes and their male allies.  All welcome, even if you haven’t read the book.

Ralph Richards, who drove a wagon (or sleigh) on a 25 mile route delivering the mail from Lincolnville Beach, up Cobbtown Road to Belmont to Searsmont and back the Beach every day, kept a diary from 1908 to the day he died in 1966:

06/14/08 Sunday

Buttiful summer day. Went down to Goodwins got Dandy shod. Took a look at Hans, he’s been sick. Sammy [Ralph’s sweetheart and wife-to-be] and I had a ride. Smike and I caught four trout in Medow Stream. I got one seventeen inches long weighed three pounds. 4 trout. Gad it was a RIPPING BIG ONE.

06/15/08 Monday

Fair heavy wind blowing all day. Awfull crazy in our midst. Allie Knight committed suicide (kilt hisself) this morning by shooting. His wife left him in bed, went out to the barn to feed the stock. Came back in a few minutes, found him dead, revolver still in his hand.

06/16/08 Tuesday

Rain hard all day. Clear late this afternoon. Cold tonight. Went out to Goodwins got Tim shod and nearly froze coming home. Paid Goodwin $10.

06/17/08 Wednesday