My father's been gone a long time. So long that at times it seems his very existence is more like an assertion or a bit of received knowledge than a fact borne of my own experience. But he was my father and I'm puzzled by how little I can remember of him and why that is.

I began earlier to probe the answer to that question, but now I want to visit what I remember of that day in July in 1952 when I was nine and everything changed. I was at my cousin Gibb's and my aunt and uncle's place at Flying Pointe, on the coast in Freeport. It was their summer cottage high on a bluff over the ocean, one of a long string of cottages, scattered along the edge; many owned by French Canadians and out-of-staters. It was a simple cottage, uninsulated, cream-painted clapboards outside; inside, two bedrooms separated by wooden tongue and groove pine panels that stopped short of the ceiling. Privacy was never an option. It had a small bathroom, but it also had an outhouse in the one-car garage 20 feet away. The walls were all unfinished pine but the living room featured a large picture window with an unobstructed view of the bay, and the islands beyond it. The cottage wasn't more than 15 grassy feet from the edge of the bluff. The only access to the rocky shore below, a three- or four-story flight of wooden stairs.

John Newburn is a recently retired adjunct instructor of ethics at Fisher College in Boston. Formerly a high school principal, selectman and English teacher, who settled in Rockport almost two years ago, John is the father of two sons. He looks forward to more time for reading, writing, traveling and civic involvement.

I often spent time there in the summer while my mother and father went further up the coast to Nobleboro and Waldoboro, home to other relatives; aunts, uncles and cousins. That was the case this particular week in July. My mother and father, both in their mid-40s, were staying at the farm, my mother's parents' place in Nobleboro. It wasn't really much of a farm, but it was old, rustic, had a barn with a hayloft, and a two-seat outhouse in a connecting storage room kind of structure between the house and the barn. And it had a big old hand pump in the deep slate kitchen sink, along with a huge black chrome trimmed wood-burning stove against a center wall... the only heat for the entire house.

My mother used to tell us how as a girl in the winter she'd go to bed at night upstairs and wake up with the blanket frozen around her mouth. Ah, the good old days. It was really just an old grey-shingled unadorned New England farmhouse with a high gabled front, a bedroom or two upstairs, one down, a dining room, living room, and of course the big kitchen. The gabled end faced the dirt road and extended back with the barn furthest from the road, and along the side was the dirt driveway all the way to the barn entrance. On this stretch of Lower Mill Road there were only two neighbors within view, or within a half mile for that matter; Hazlette and Evelyn Simmons with their three daughters, who lived Appalachian style in the place across the street. And the Trasks, who lived next to them but who were there only occasionally. They weren't year-rounders.

Transformations

We tell stories.

We tell stories to make sense of our lives.

We tell stories to communicate our experience of being alive.

We tell stories in our own distinct voice. Our own unique rhythm and tonality.

Transformations is a weekly story-telling column. The stories are written by community members who are my students. Our stories will be about family, love, loss and good times. We hope to make you laugh and cry. Maybe we will convince you to tell your stories.

— Kathrin Seitz

“Everyone, when they get quiet, when they become desperately honest with themselves, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.” — Henry Miller

Kathrin Seitz teaches Method Writing in Rockport, New York City and Florida. She can be reached at kathrin@kathrinseitz.com.

Haz and Evelyn on the other hand were true Mainers, like the Beans of Egypt. Critters all over the place, farm equipment and old appliances in various states of assembly and decrepitude scattered around the yard, and chickens wandering in an out of the house along with an occasional goat. And always the beer. Haz had that odor of beer or ale about him with clusters of big brown bottles around the porch, on the steps, or in the barn, where he had a few milking cows.

And Haz seemed to almost never shave, although he also never really had a full beard. He just always had lots of whiskers. Evelyn was a caricature of a woman who'd had three kids, had nothing else, led a hard life, had no real prospects nor decent clothes and just let everything go. She wore the same one-piece house dress everyday it seemed, the stains and the pattern indistinguishable. But they were wonderful people; kind generous, hard working, sort of, and good neighbors who would do anything for you.

Their house was a dull peeling white with a rutted dirt driveway leading to their barn out back. They had a sort of wrap-around porch littered with stuff of all sorts. And they were close. You walked from my grandparents' driveway, across a small dirt road and into Haz and Evelyn's driveway, really just rutted barren patches of gravel. It was rustic, to say the least.

My folks were at the farm with my grandparents, and I was down at Flying Pointe with my cousin, Gibb, and Wally and Greta, my aunt and uncle. Life was good. Gibb and I were only a year apart in age, me being the older, and we got along really well. We'd spend hours down on the rocky beach playing in the water, diving off our favorite outcropping, imagining stories, creating contests, always aware of the movement of the tide, and when and where the water would be too deep or shallow for our adventures.

It was sometime around mid-morning that day when Wally and Greta got a phone call. Gibb and I were in the cottage doing something, playing a board game or cards, maybe. And I remember them telling me that my father was not feeling well and my mother thought it would be good for me to be with her, and that a taxi was on its way to pick me up. I knew this was unusual but couldn't attach any more meaning than that to this disclosure. So they get me ready to go, pack my things, get me cleaned up, and ready for the taxi. The only real clear image I have of that day is the taxi pulling off the dirt road onto their grassy lawn, which served as a driveway. I climbed in the back with my small bag of things and the cab backed out. And there to my left were Wally Greta and Gibb standing together on the lawn watching me go, with earnest smiling faces, waving to me as I disappear around the curve.

I remember nothing of the ride to Waldoboro at all until the cab pulled in to my Uncle Tom and Irene's driveway off of Friendship Road right across the street from my Uncle Foster and Agnes's place and their big poultry farm. The first person I saw was my Uncle Tom, who was always good to me and fun to be with. Both he and Irene still had traces of their Irish brogue and spoke with a lilt in their voices. I think a couple of my aunts were there to greet me and give me hugs, but I can't be sure. But Uncle Tom ushered me through the white picket gate to a small bench in the back yard and sat me down, and then knelt down before me. He put a hand on my knee and said: "Johnny, your father died last night, suddenly. And your mother's inside, and your sister, Nancy, is on her way up here to be with you."

Other things were said too, I'm sure, but nothing I can recall. Even then, at nine years old, my first response wasn't sadness, but a silent struggle to understand the meaning of what he'd said. Little has changed in 60 years.

I then walked with uncle Tom into the kitchen, past my aunts, through the dinning room, the parlor, down the hall and up the stairs into the bedroom where my mother was and into the arms of the woman who, for the 15 years left of her own life, would be my remaining parent.