Homecoming

I was eight years old when I decided I would live in Maine. It was a warm Summer night, and they had dressed Nubble Light up in white lights for Christmas in July. Light sparkled on the waves below me as the Nubble stood proudly on its little island. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

“I’m going to live here when I grow up,” I declared.

I thought of the Nubble as my lighthouse, and it became a sort of touchpoint for me over the years- the first place I went to when I arrived in York, the last place I went for before leaving. To this day, the sight of the lighthouse grounds me. With my feet on the rocks, I feel connected to the town, to my family, to the eight-year-old who knew that this was home.

My parents met at a restaurant right by Nubble Light, called Fox’s Lobster House. Dad worked the line and Mom was a waitress. Their Summer romance lead to a beautiful 19-year-old bride and my existence. They had three kids and a cocker spaniel, and we moved all over the place as my dad built his restaurant career. We settled in Oregon when I was in fourth grade. (Not long after my declaration that York would be my future home.) My parents’ marriage eventually ended but they still share a love for Maine. I like to think of my connection to the place as destiny, both sides of my family contributing to my salty blood and desperate need for sea air.

I have been living on the opposite coast since I was nine. Oregon is beautiful and it has been a good place to grow up, but Maine is the place that raised me. My grandparents had a Summer cottage there, and when the childhood highlight reel plays in my mind, it’s always the backdrop. Summers in York are magical, and my grandparents made it even more so. Grandma made sure we had all the delicious food we could eat, and spoiled me with frequent shopping trips. She supplied my back-to-school wardrobe every year, which I modeled for the whole family under the stage name Diamond. Grandpa would sing folk songs and tell silly jokes and swing us around in the yard. We watched VHS musicals on rainy days and sang songs all the way to the beach when it was sunny.

A York Beach Summer meant jumping waves and getting knocked down, mouthfuls of grape Kool-Aid from a paper cup, backyard cookouts and washing dishes by hand. I even spent a couple of my college Summers working in York and living with my Aunt, who was entirely too good to me. She let me live in her home, eat her food and borrow her minivan all Summer. I made good friends, fell in and out of love, explored the woods after dark and swam during thunderstorms. I was electrically alive, and my future sprawled out before me like an open road. I imagined that future in myriad ways, all of them leading back to a nighttime drive along Long Sands with my windows down.

My Julys and Augusts were made of thunder storms, sunburns, giant mosquito bites, blisters from long walks on gravel roads— all such unpleasant things that I think of now with fondness. Like most kids, I didn’t know how good I had it. At night I drifted to sleep listening to a chorus of laughter, clinking glasses and shuffling cards from the adults downstairs. Sometimes I could hear the blast of the Nubble’s foghorn. I traced the shapes in the knotty pine ceiling with my eyes until they were too heavy to stay open. I have spent my whole life trying to replicate that feeling of safety.

Thirty-six years after the initial promise to myself that I would call Maine my home, a plan to do just that has been set in place.