I played the widow card the other day with an old friend (old, both as in our friendship and as in his age, 90-plus). It was a subtle reference, but one I’m not shy about. We were talking about change, his need to clean out the stuff that has accumulated in his house as he prepares to, eventually, move.

“Once you get rid of it, you’ll never miss it,” I said in my wisest voice. “There’s no better feeling than driving away from the dump with an empty truck.”

Four years ago, as I prepared to give up half my house to my son’s family and move downstairs, there was a perpetual Free Table set up at the end of my driveway. I had a running conversation with Kenneth Jones as he helped me unload at the commercial dumpster on my thrice-weekly trips to the MCSW transfer station – the dump as it used to be called.

Everything had to go. I exaggerate, as anyone who’s been in this place can attest. I got rid of a lot, but I kept an awful lot, too. Truckloads, tablefuls, armloads of stuff I’d never need again went away.

Change is proportional: the daily rhythm of sunrise to sunset, spring to full-on summer, the faces behind the counter, your child’s shoe size, changes we barely notice, and then there’s the change that hits us over the head and knocks us silly. Losing a job, moving to a new town, divorce, an ominous diagnosis – various degrees of change. Loss of a spouse, a parent, or God forbid, a child.

So, the widow card I carry.

Losing my partner of 50 years has, and probably will be, the biggest change of my life. Well, until the ultimate change, when I’m gone, too. Once his absence had become integrated into my daily life – and that does happen – new habits developed. Some people dwell in memory, some in the now.

I opted for the now. But memory has a way of popping up, like that diabolical Facebook thing where they show you a photo from years ago. It takes a strong constitution to click away from those photos of you and your now dead spouse smiling, completely unaware of what was to come, or worse, of how ill he looked now that you do know what was coming.

But I still live in our first house, the one we bought the spring we married. Fifty-one years ago this month, maybe even to this day, we moved into the house where we’d live out our lives together. The birth of three sons (the last one born right upstairs), the place where my father would die and then, in the same room, the one I write in now, Wally would, too.

Nobody told us what owning a 100-year-old farmhouse meant. A typical Maine farmhouse, built of recycled timbers, a foundation that settles unevenly each spring when the frost comes out, built on the north side of a mountain (454-foot-tall Frohock might as well be one as the sun barely touches us in mid-winter), was probably going to suck up every extra dollar we made.

We were continually remodeling, adding on, shoring up. Barnyard carpentry we called it, a chainsaw generally his tool of choice.

Our first woodshed was a huge thing with a long, sloping roof built over our first son’s sandbox. It lasted 10 or more years before we tore it down and built the next woodshed.

I designed it (sketched out probably on the back of the Camden Farmers’ Union oil bill) and was pretty proud of it. Wally always said it looked like a wedding chapel. The boys hated it as those were the days they had to keep the woodboxes filled; they could barely squeeze through its narrow doorway with an armload.

A year ago, that terrible pandemic spring, we tore it down. I finally agreed it was time; its roof was growing moss and lichens and had sprung holes in the soft spots. Plus everyone told me it was ugly, blocking the view of the nice, new double doors on the barn.

Actually, though we all pitched in a bit, Tracee’s the one who really took it down, putting all her pent-up energy into whaling into it with heavy tools. She and her father, Allan Moeller, erected a brand-new shed at the far end of the house using the boards he’d sawed.

Allan, newly retired down in Dresden, has been keeping busy turning pine logs into boards. The man has a serious number of toys: excavator, sawmill, tractor, stock car, four-wheelers to name just a few. Also, Don French’s beloved Silverado Duramax diesel truck, the one with the iconic Hussey’s General Store bumper sticker. You know, “Guns, wedding gowns and beer”.

The two struck a deal last fall, when Don decided the time had finally come to part with his shiny black truck and realized Allan would value it as much as he had.

One of the first things we’d built, back in those days before children, was a hen house. Like most of our first projects, it wasn’t very well-built. Not counting the hole Wally had blown into the front of it one dark night, aiming for whatever critter was stealing our birds, it was disintegrating within a few years. A little smarter this time, we got some help building the next coop. Tom and Jan Shandera, neighbors and friends on Slab City Road (actually Scoppa Road) offered to help.

This was a good move on our part as everything they’d built, including their house, was tight and straight and well-thought out. We set aside a week-end, and it just happened that Johnny, Wally’s nephew, was in town, staying with us for a few days. Our youngest, 43-years-old now, remembers being about five at the time. Now Wally and Johnny enjoyed a few beers when they got together. That certainly ought to help speed up the construction, right? There’s something to be said for waiting till the job’s done before popping the first beer, unless, that is, you have competent help as well.

I can’t remember details, but happily Tom and Jan’s assistance won the day. In fact, I’m pretty sure they did most of the work. When, many years later, Tom and Jan pulled up stakes and moved to Washington state we lost two solid friends,  though most summers they find their way back home to Maine. 

At any rate, the hen house built on that beer-soaked week-end is still standing today, though much the worse for wear. When we realized it was sinking into the ground, we built a new floor atop the first and got another decade out of it.

But it’s finally time to move on. With some 30 chickens living in a space built for a dozen we’re putting up a new house. Or I should say, Tracee and her dad are. A couple of weeks ago Allan arrived with his excavator and a load of newly-sawn pine boards and timbers. In one busy morning he felled two huge pines that had been shedding limbs and shade in the henyard for years, cut the trunks into 8-foot lengths and hauled them back to Dresden.

A couple of days later he was back to lay down the platform, 12 x 14 feet, for the new hen house, with the help of his assistants, daughter Tracee and wife Cindy. And all I could do was watch out the window next to my loom and cheer them on. When it’s all done, and this time Tracee and I are doing the plan together, Allan will knock down the old house and drag it to the burn pile.

Change. Often, these days, I walk around the place and notice the changes Wally never saw.

The garden beds, including the one that holds his ashes, the downstairs room we added 15 years ago that’s now my bedroom, but still with the brass-trimmed iron bed we bought that first July, the one Gertrude Hopper helped me polish and paint under the hot summer sun; Gertrude long gone now. Who remembers her?

The upstairs transformed into a home for our middle son’s family, including the dusty, dark, spider-webby barn loft that’s now a bright living room with comfy sofas, skylights, a piano keyboard, the big TV screen where the family gathers to watch movies.

How much he’s missed out on. Six grandchildren remember him, the youngest perhaps less clearly than the older ones. He’s missed three eighth grade graduations and now the first high school one. But perhaps the most significant is the baby he never knew was coming. Three-year-old Nora, wasn’t even a gleam in her parents’ eyes, as they say, when her grandfather died.

Maybe this isn’t about change, but rather, about life going on and how we fit in.

Town

This week’s Selectmen meeting agenda is posted on the town website.

David Kinney posted on the LBB:

“The region’s ambulance service provider, North East Mobile Health Services, is offering an opportunity to help people earn their Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) license while getting paid as a full-time employee.” Contact David for more information on this. Classes start in August.

Library

Librarian Sheila Polson writes:

“In a change from the usual schedule, the library needlework group will not meet this Tuesday, July 13. Instead the next meeting will be Tuesday, July 20 from 3 to 5 p.m. This group is open to everyone, both beginners and those with more experience. 

Everyone is invited to come to the library to work on watercolor journals on Wednesday, July 14 from 3 to 5 p.m. Bring paints, brushes, favorite writing implements and journals. This group will continue to meet the second and fourth Wednesday of each month. 

The library also has some fun coloring books for grownups who would like to spend the time enjoying this relaxing activity. Bring markers or borrow the library's small collection of colored pencils. 

Anyone who is not fully vaccinated is asked to please wear a face mask when inside the library.

Coleman Pond Association

Taken from this spring’s newsletter:

A surprise sighting occurred at Lincolnville Beach when Wing Goodale identified a loon that he banded twenty (!) years ago on Coleman Pond. On that night in 2001 Wing, Jeff Brawn and Tony Oppersdorff placed bands on a 14-pound male bird before releasing him back into the warm dark night waters of the pond. The bands (a combination of variously striped colored metal and plastic provide a unique signature) were registered with BioDiversity Research Institute and the Federal Wildlife Service. Wing, who is the Senior Science Director of BRI, is all but certain that the bird swimming underwater close to the Lincolnville wharf is the same Coleman Pond loon. Since loons usually don’t breed before the age of five, this bird must be at least 25 years old.

The group’s annual meeting will be Saturday, July 24, 9 a.m. to noon at Whitney Oppersdorff’s studio, third left on Brawn Road.

Knee Update

Thank you to all who ask “how are you doing?” when they see me out and about. This is now the start of week 10 post-op since Dr. Scordino installed my new knee at PenBay. I’ve been walking since day one, home after one night in the hospital, driving since week two, going to PT twice a week in Belfast (Therapy Partners) for five weeks, and now once every two weeks.

These days my knee isn’t the first thing I think about; choosing the shortest walking route or smoothest surface is no longer a worry.

The newest challenge is getting down on the ground to weed the garden, then figuring out how to get up. If you’re contemplating (or have already scheduled) knee replacement surgery, like most of life’s challenges, it’s not as bad as you might think. It’s what I needed to hear before the big day I traded in that arthritic, 77-year-old knee for a shiny new one.