Most mornings this winter my first glimpse of the sun comes in Barb’s email, a photo of that day’s sunrise from her perch on the shore in Camden. She tracks the seasons through the sun’s trajectory back and forth across Penobscot Bay, the islands serving as markers. Though I’m only a mile from the shore the sun is well up before it gleams through the trees of Sleepy Hollow and shines on my neighborhood.

Tom Crowley, the poet of our Bulletin Board, has a view similar to Barb’s, and today’s email brought this:

Spring Medicine

 In the spring

I take my medicine

in coffee spoons.

small doses of

new-made maple syrup

overflowing the spoon

into hot coffee. 

Healing the

wounds of winter

as the earth warms,

and the sun rises

over the islands

sooner every day.

Maine.

So, instead of looking out my window at 4:30 a.m., I slide open the shed door and listen. Too early, too dark for the birds, I listen for that most welcoming sound at the end of winter – drip drip drip -- the snow melting off the roof.

“At last”, we all say to each other. And “It’s supposed to get up to 50 today!” The weather. My dad, a Midwesterner, a town dweller, a city guy moved to Maine in his 70s, and never got over how people here raved about a good day. He always maintained that “Anyplace where they talk about a nice day as much as here must have lousy weather.”

I think it’s a country thing, but it sure is a Maine thing. The diaries people kept in the old days invariably start out with the weather report. “Fair but it has blown a awfull gale all day”, wrote Ralph Richards on March 26, 1908. “And tonight it is whooping it up something fierce.” A day later, “Warm overcast. Rain tonight. Awfull hard traveling.”  By March 30, “Fair. But such traveling would drive a man to drink.”

That would be mud season, and for a man who delivered the mail on a daily 25 mile route from Lincolnville Beach up Cobbtown Road to Belmont’s Halls Corner through Searsmont and back down to the Beach “on runners” (sleigh) or wheels (wagon) mud was a big deal. It still is. On my twice-daily trips to the hen house I feel the ground giving way underfoot as the frost comes out. Yesterday the rain barrel, rather the ice barrel for the past several months, had melted enough to siphon out a bucketful for the chickens. Carrying a pail of water from the house through the drifts and ice of winter was getting old.

One of our sons had a ritual of his own this time of year. Come a certain day with a feel of warmth to it and he’d gather up his teddy bear, Boogie, and a little basket and go out looking for what he called “Boogie’s Signs of Spring.” An hour later he’d be back and dump out the basket to show us a sprig of something green, a crocus, some moss, a feather. Best of all would be the report on his spring flower, the painted trillium he’d discovered on one of these annual forays. So his dad and I would follow him to the edge of the woods to admire what to all of us was the true, first sign of spring at Sleepy Hollow.

 This year I’m looking, alone, for personal signs of spring. The little boy has grown up, Boogie forgotten, and the one person I counted on for daily weather reports is gone. I survey winter’s wreck in the garden beds, the dirty patches of snow and ice, the woodshed litter, broken branches and piles of sunflower seed hulls under the feeders. I hurry to finish up the indoor tasks I’ve set myself. The pantry’s neat, the china cupboard purged, washed and sparkling, the oven door – well, you’ve heard enough about that – the freezer’s contents inventoried, re-stacked or fed to the hens.

One small sign that my spring may be near: the first-thing-in-the-morning peek around the door at the box that holds his physical remains, his ashes. “Good morning,” I’ve said silently every day to that box. And “good night” last thing before going upstairs. Halfway through a recent day I realized I hadn’t done it, hadn’t blown him a kiss, hadn’t wished him a private morning greeting, the one that used to be delivered across our pillows. Had I forgotten?

 Of course, I then promptly fell through the rabbit hole. It’s how I’m coming to see my own consciousness these days. There’s the regular, normal plane. Answer the phone, answer the door. Have normal conversations with people about the normal things of our mutual lives. Make dates, promise to send a link or pick up a book at the library. I laugh at jokes, pay careful attention to the latest news, get engrossed in a novel. I’ve even started weaving again, something I haven’t done in at least a year. Most days are good, productive and well, normal.

Then there’s that underneath plane, the place that yawns below me, the place where missing him lives. It opens up at the oddest times. Hanging the laundry, Frohock Brook open for fishing, the new splitting maul he barely got to use. Or nothing at all.

We’d talked endlessly about one of us going, starting years ago when both of us were healthy, but basically it was him saying he’d be first and me protesting, “you don’t know that.” But he did know. He worried if I would be all right, would there be enough money (and for the hundredth time he’d talk over how the pension was supposed to work), how would I get in the wood? Or get those buckets of water out to the hens. Never once did he say or did I say, how would I stand it?

Surprisingly, neither of us had a clue about the emptiness and the raw longing that would spring up, the need. The need for him, his voice, his touch, above all for his reassurance and his love.

The other night I attended a meeting in Rockland of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, or simply the Maine ACLU. It was held at the Lincoln Center, or as I’ll always call it, the Rockland Junior High School, the building where I was once a sixth grade teacher. After poking around my old classroom for a bit, I went upstairs where several dozen people had gathered in the auditorium to learn about the work of the ACLU in Maine

The mission of the ACLU is to defend the individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution to every person in this country. And, I learned, basic human rights extend even to undocumented immigrants who are protected under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Then we heard about LD 366, a proposed law working its way through the Legislature, which would require towns to make their police officers act as immigration agents. Under this law, any town which didn’t comply would loose all state funding. How does Lincolnville fit in here? We have no town police, but rely on Waldo County Sheriff Department and the State Police. And also, we have quite a small immigrant presence in town. Why should we care?

There are a number of reasons this is a bad idea, not the least of which is that if by chance your municipality detained someone under this proposed law it’s on your dime; the feds won’t reimburse your town for any expenses incurred, such as cost of jail, transporting, etc.

Congratulations to the following March Students of the Month: Kindergarten, Declan Grant and Abby Howland; First Grade, Cora Leavitt and Elise Talty; Second Grade, Py Nakjaroen; Third Grade, Jacob Greeley and Ellora Hunt; Fourth Grade, Elliot Condon; Fifth Grade, Owen McManus and Mikayla Talbot; Sixth Grade, Luna Abaldo; Seventh Grade, Lizzie Larsen-Leavins; and Eighth Grade, Phoebe Root.

 Tuesday, April 11 from 4-6 p.m. is needlework time at the Lincolnville Community Library. Bring a knitting or other project to work on and stay for all or part of the time. This group is for everyone, no matter their level of experience. 

 Saturday April 15 is children’s craft morning at the Library. Kids and their parents are invited to come make whimsical birds from 10 a.m. to noon. There will be lots of colorful paper and decorations for creating all kinds of feathered creatures to celebrate spring. The program is free. 

 I (Diane O’Brien) will lead a two-session sewing workshop on Saturdays, April 22 and May 6 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Library. Each participant will make a simple blouse using a pattern and a sewing machine. We’ll lay out the pattern, cut out the pieces and assemble them, using both machine and some hand sewing. I’ll provide the pattern, you bring the cloth. It requires 2 ½ yards of 44” wide fabric; if this will just be a learning experience you can use a large bedsheet or piece of muslin. Contact Sheila at the Library, 763-4343 or by email to register. The class is free, but we can only take six people.

Once again it’s a toss-up for pick of the week on the L’ville Bulletin Board. I thought I had it knocked with this one:

A resident on Masalin Road has a VERY small terrier type/wire hair dog who has appeared in her yard.  She said she found it sitting by her mailbox wearing a Halloween themed sweater.  She has it with her right now.  A tag was found on the dog with a phone number, but no answer. If this is your dog, please give her a call at …..

 Then came another one from our local, self-proclaimed Curry King, Arif Shaikh. Arif’s been posting for a few weeks now, telling us about his amazing curries and where we can find them. I’m definitely intrigued.

 But this morning’s post had me laughing out loud: he writes, in part that he’s “100 percent convinced that my parents never did anything more than grunt at each other, which they still do. The only thing better than watching the July 4th fireworks is watching my parents’ eyebrows while they fight.

 “Just so you know, the last time my father smiled was 1985, a few years after immigrating to the U.S. He found a $1,000 bill in a used coat he bought in a yard sale for $6. After three gas stations told him they don't accept Monopoly money, he went to Kmart to buy a map to find out where the state of Monopoly was. We lived in the State of Wisconsin at the time. I won't delve further into this. But needless to say, I was banned from board games for life. Poo Poo. Poo. That's why I didn't get a Ph.D in physics.)”

 It goes on from there. Then this: “Mark this day: April 9, 2017. In a few years, history classes in America will refer to this day as the beginning of a 'Curry Coup' - the day a benevolent dictator from an Indian village took over kitchens across America from the armchair capital of Facebook.” With Arif and our poet T. Crowley, along with an occasional little dog in a Halloween-themed sweater, the LBB is the best entertainment in town.