One of my close friends often commented to me, after hearing my many little vignettes about my childhood, that I should write a book about life in Maine. I used to chuckle, but never really thought much about it. To me, life in Maine was just life, and not really anything to write a book about. I have noticed the longer that I have lived away from The Great State, that there were a lot of things that I grew up doing, seeing, and hearing, that the rest of the world doesn't know about. Just as anyone has local norms that they know better than outsiders, the same is true for people from Maine. Mainers. Though if you ask one of us, we call ourselves Main-ahs!
Many of the things that I have discovered are unique to Maine (or in some cases New England) are foods. Whoopie pies, Italians (sandwiches, not people), Moxie, not to mention lobster caught by my neighbor. Still other things are weather related: blizzards in April, wearing T shirts in June because the temps climbed out of the 50's, walking up to the beach and being excited if the water temp on the chalkboard was 60. On a related note, there was the unforgettable feeling of sharp pain that started at my ankles and ran up the back of my legs when I first put my feet into the ocean water, as my blood adjusted to the cold. It was almost like an ice cream headache for my whole body. And then, there was the pinkish-red hue that the body has after swimming in said water, similar to how one's skin looks after applying an ice pack to an injury. In Florida, people don't look like that after they swim. But the weather related things weren't all bad. The faint smell of the salt air on a 78 degree summer day. All of the windows open, and the curtains blowing in the breeze, and not a cloud in the perfectly blue sky. Zero percent humidity. Perfect, Maine summer days are why Maine is called Vacationland. Nothing beats the beauty of Maine in the summer.
There were things, too, that were just experiences. In the spring and summer, it was lovely to canoe in the marsh just five minutes from my house, or go on a whale watch. In the winter, the whole family would go cross country skiing in the woods behind the house, or go skating on the nearby frozen pond. Neighbors had snow mobiles, but I never dared ride on one, a fact that I now completely regret. The best part of winter, by far, for me as a kid was going sledding on "snow days". Now that I am a teacher, I regularly miss snow days! There is a lot of Maine that is not on the ocean, but I grew up five minutes from the coast, and I have never seen anything that is as gorgeous to me as the rugged coast of Maine. It is breathtaking to walk on the shoreline and look out to the water to see the dark blue waves pound against the cliffs making a foamy white spray. I could watch that for hours. In summer I also loved the occasional trips to the Lobster Shack for a hamburger boat or fried clams, or the short ferry ride out to Peak's Island to spend the day.
The way we talk in Maine is a bit different too. It was poorly impersonated in "Murder She Wrote" (one of my favorite shows) by the fictional folks in Cabot Cove, but they had the right idea. R sounds, other than at beginnings of words or in blends, are dropped and replaced with the 'ah' sound. I grew up being called Jennifah...and we drove the "cah" to the the "p-ah-k". The other big dialect thing in Maine is the tremendously skilled use of the word "wicked". In Maine vernacular, "wicked" has no moral implications. It is used indiscriminately for both good and bad things. It simply means really, really, very, very. For example, a breathtakingly gorgeous day at the beach isn't "really nice", it's WICKED nice. Being stricken with a terrible flu isn't really bad, it's a WICKED bad flu. Notice how wicked doesn't replace bad. It describes it. That is key to the proper use of wicked, Mainer style. Sorry. Mainah style!
Maine was an amazingly awesome, scratch that, wicked awesome place to grow up. It was safe, and fun, and full of what life should be full of...experiences. There may have been kids who never went outside, and instead grew pasty white playing video games for every waking moment. I, however, didn't know any of them. The kids I knew climbed trees, went skiing, rode their bikes, went to the beach, went fishing or lobstering with their dad, ran cross country through the wooded trails, went on family hikes, and apple picking, or spent summers at the family house on one of Maine's awesome lakes. They even, when forced, helped their parents with the gardening. Ok, maybe that was just me. But, it was a good life. It was, as the state motto says, "The way life should be".
"I felt like I'd been misplaced in the cosmos and I belonged in Maine."
-Terry Goodkind
