My brother was a thinker, a dreamer of grand plans, plans that sometimes worked, but just as often, came to naught. He actually made a living thinking stuff up and then selling his plans, first to candidates – detailed campaigns designed to get people elected – and later, to companies. In the last years of his life he “wrote” a book about political cycles, a book that existed only in his mind and in dozens of file folders. 

He thought of these cycles as political seasons – spring, summer, fall, and winter. A new idea, he figured, put forth in winter had little chance of catching hold with the public, while a summer one did. I can’t remember what constituted a political winter, but apparently the whole theory he’d evolved was compelling enough that Hillary Clinton met with him to get his advice about her prospects for a presidential run in 2008. And he was a Republican.

At least once every day or so somebody in this family wonders “what would Uncle Bill think?” Is this political morass we’re in the winter he imagined? I suspect it’s not. He was an optimist through and through, perhaps an extreme optimist. If anyone could find something good in 2020 it was Bill Roesing.

Uncle Bill has been gone for five years; he died two years before Wally, almost to the day. His face greets me every morning, framed on my dresser, along with our dad’s and Wally’s – the three men who guided, taught, and loved me through my life. I thought of him as my best friend, once that is, we’d grown up beyond the sibling fighting stage.

Boy, we battled as kids; watching (and hearing) my upstairs three picking at each other, day-long bickering and outright fighting, I’m taken back to my own days as big sister to a bratty little brother. But I have no doubts about their future relationship. No one is fiercer about protecting each other out in the world than siblings.

Politics aside, this is indeed a strange season – of empty calendars, of isolating, of uncertainty. We step back from friends – six feet, remember?

We meet outdoors, standing uncomfortably to chat where in any other time we’d say, “Come in; let’s sit and talk.”

Two 12- year-old girls, best friends, who haven’t seen one another in months, reconnect wearing masks, awkwardly rebuilding what they had.

Yet, the very restrictions the pandemic puts on us, are oddly freeing. Since we no longer fill our calendars with obligations, social gatherings, meetings, appointments, we’ve gained hours and hours to do with as we want.

As we want.

I’ll make a comparison to widowhood (and widowerhood). Loss of one’s spouse, perhaps the most profound loss in terms of changing your life, though of a different magnitude from losing a child, forces you to figure out what you want. “I want him back” doesn’t cut it.

“Who am I now?” is more like it. So too with 2020. The predictable is out the window. School and work are curtailed; shorter hours perhaps, restrictions on socializing, worry about every little “symptom” – do I have covid??

As always, I speak from my perch above the fray. Retired, old though healthy so far, living alone (but not really, with an upstairs family and a down-the-road companion) I still wake up with a feeling of dread. What’s going to happen to us? Will I live long enough to see normal return? What will normal be like?

Then my own optimism kicks in. Uncle Bill and I weren’t siblings by blood, but perhaps by temperament we are. By the time I’m up and dressed the day looks brighter. If it’s Monday there’s an article to write (the only deadline in my life these days), a dog to walk, hens to feed.

And a garden to get ready for next year.

After this my 50th garden in this very spot, I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. What to plant, how much to plant, what we’ll actually eat. Simple stuff really, but like most simple things with an underlying complexity that takes experience, years of experience to get right.

Knowing ourselves is another example of that simplicity. You’d think it would be easy, to understand our own foibles, tendencies, obsessions, and better yet, to make them work for us. This strange covid season is giving us a chance to do that.

Town

The Selectman meet tonight, Monday the 28 th, at 6 p.m. On the agenda will be a discussion of the Beach Schoolhouse and the Historical Society’s request to buy it. You can join the meeting here. 

Condolences to Their Families

Last week was a rough one for Lincolnville.

Ed Moran passed away at the cottage he built, in view of Coleman Pond. I didn’t know Ed, except through Northport’s Hideaway, the restaurant he and his wife ran for many years, and where Ed’s homemade breads were a highlight of the many breakfasts we ate there over the years.

Al Woods, familiar to many who enjoyed seeing him drive his WWII jeep in town parades, died at his home on Joy Road.

Deanne Brown, who lived at the head of Nortons Pond with her late husband George, died last week.

And Owen Weyers, who opened the Beach Store this summer, passed away last week, as well. Owen, whose mother, Norma Patten, gave him Lincolnville roots, moved to the Beach last winter from his Ducktrap condo to run the store with his son. I’ll miss seeing him, setting out tables and chairs each morning for the breakfast customers.

On a personal note, though probably not known by anyone in Lincolnville, Bob Conrad, an old friend of Wally and I, went for a walk out back of his St. George home the other day, and because of his dementia apparently became disoriented and couldn’t find his way back. His body was found the next day in the woods. Bob had an adventurous spirit, full of enthusiasm for new ventures in the years we knew him in Rockland back in the 60s.