The box of photos taunts me. You think you’re in charge, it says mockingly. Think you can move on just by throwing out a few knickknacks and re-arranging your house? You haven’t even begun.

I’d kept up with the first couple of decades of our life together. Four fat, three-ring binders of those photos sit on a handy shelf, so grandkids and sons, and especially their wives can leaf through the pages and see what we all looked like so long ago.

But I ran out of steam for the project about the time the boys were heading off to college, so the photos of graduations, the weddings, the grandkids, and our years with a blessedly empty nest remain scrambled in a box. I knew it was time to tackle it again when my upstairs D-I-L came down the other evening to share the bottle of wine she’d found at the General Store. Making room on the chair she picked up the box, idly looked at a photo or two and was lost.

We both were as she pulled out one after another.

Old girl friends, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, old friends long gone. They were all there and those times, especially those summer weeks when the clan gathered, were as alive as if yesterday.

As anyone of us who live here in Vacationland year round know, summer is when they come. “They” being our scattered relatives, friends of those relatives, in-laws of those relatives, basically anyone who is attached to our far-flung families. If you’ve moved here recently, say within the past five years or so, you’ll be particularly hard hit as your people realize they have a Maine connection, and that you have a spare bedroom.

We never really had a spare room back in the day, with three footloose sons claiming their old bedrooms (and they always managed to land here for the summer no matter where they were studying or working anywhere else in the world), but that didn’t stop the clan from gathering. People, especially young people, travel with sleeping bags, their own pillow or favorite quilt. They can curl up anywhere – out on the screened porch, in a tent in the yard, or on your living room couch.

We always got up before anyone else what with a cow to milk, chickens to feed, the Beach to pick up. But first came coffee and a chapter or two from our current read-aloud book. We learned to pick our way around the sleeping bodies, but if someone was on the couch – too bad.

Wally would open up the book and continue reading where he’d left off the morning before. The couch occupant might pretend to be asleep, but actually listening to the unfolding tale, or might wander groggily upstairs dragging his/her bedding behind to climb into our vacant bed.

The fridges (we’ve always had one in the barn just for summer) overflowed, packed full of the goodies our guests had brought. One sister-in-law came every summer from southern New Jersey. Their van would pull in and out would climb three or four teenagers (some related to us, some not) a couple of adults and coolers full of Jersey tomatoes, sweet corn, and blueberries – the big cultivated kind we never saw here, the reason it’s the Garden State. Another cooler held the hoagies, foot-long sandwiches packed with meats and cheeses and tomatoes, one for each of us in the family, tasting like nothing we’ve ever had here.

This is the time of year when a dooryard full of vehicles probably means the clan has arrived, not that someone has died. Over this past Fourth of July week you could spot them all over town, the out of state plates, tents set up, kids walking along the road, the smell of meats grilling.

Another sister-in-law comes from Augusta this afternoon with her New Jersey sister, a California daughter and of course, assorted grandchildren and now great-grands, all looking forward to meeting our newest addition, four-month old Nora. We’ll unpack the food they’ve brought, spread out around the table and eat and talk away the afternoon.

Missing at the table, as he always is these days, will be the brother these two women adored, missing but not forgotten as we’ll tell again the stories that comfort us.

We – Don and I – had the fun of bringing our two clans together over the weekend for a picnic at the shore. It proved another unanticipated side effect of our mutual loss, as our offspring revisited their childhood haunts, both the actual places and the emotional landscape that our missing spouses once filled.

All are encouraged and welcome to join a lively and social afternoon of crochet, knitting and/or other needlework.  Bring your favorite project this Tuesday, July 10,  from 4 until 6 p.m.

The Writing Group meets Friday, July 13 at 9 a.m.   This group regularly meets with Sheila at the Library on the second and fourth Fridays to share their work and discuss ideas about their craft. Newcomers are welcome

The week of July 23-27 a team of amateur photographers under the direction of Tillman Crane, an internationally known photographer from Camden, will be roaming around Lincolnville recording the goings on at various businesses, farms, the Beach, etc. The resulting photos will help commemorate the 200th anniversary of the building of the Center Meeting House, today’s United Chrisitan Church.