Mondays are for dreaming: Vinalhaven

In August of 1982, during that liminal summer between the end of grammar school and the start of junior high, my mother brought me, my sister Sheila, and her own sister, my Aunt Rita, to spend ten days on an island in the Penobscot Bay.

We rode a ferry through the mist from Rockland, Maine to the small town of Vinalhaven, whose only nod to tourism was a few shops selling macramé and lobster claw keychains. When we arrived, my mother drove her ancient station wagon to a small green house that overlooked the ocean. Down the hill was a beach and pier from the end of which Uncle Ernie (not my uncle, but that’s what everyone called him) would set out each morning in his small boat to check his lobster traps. Almost daily we bought from his fresh catch and cooked it for dinner, using leftovers to make lobster salad that we ate in buttered hot dog rolls for lunch the next day.

The house had running water but no indoor toilet – the outhouse was a two-seater and smelled of lye. I’m not sure if there was a telephone; I seem to remember going to the neighbor’s house or perhaps the pay phone at the general store in town to call my father and stepmother and tell them about the picture frame decorated with seashells I purchased with the spending money they had given me.

There was no television in the house either and in the long late-summer evenings we would play cards, running the gin rummy score up into the thousands while we slapped mosquitoes and ate barbeque Wise potato chips and drank Grape Crush soda – treats that we rarely if ever got to enjoy at home. Or maybe we gathered around the small piano in the living room and my aunt and sister would twirl around the room in each other’s arms while I played a Strauss waltz, all of us laughing as I tried to play faster and faster until they tumbled breathless onto the sofa.

Ten days on an island was perfect for escape and also for dreaming. On the edge of adolescence, exciting and apprehensive about starting seventh grade where I knew that the girls wore eye shadow I brought my first copy of Seventeen magazine on the trip and spent hours perusing the glossy photos and articles about how to make friends and what boys liked. When I tired of that I turned to Anne of Avonlea, which was more suited to an innocent girl who secretly sill wanted to play with dolls. I dreamed of growing up to be like Anne, who also lived on an island, and who was smart and funny and had a handsome boy to love her.

The island was a miraculous place, craggy and mysterious. The ocean was too cold for swimming but abandoned granite quarries filled with the coolest and softest of water turned my hair to silk as I tried again and again unsuccessfully to touch the bottom. The ground was covered with wild blueberries which we picked and ate by the greedy handful. My mother brought home bags of these tiny bits of sweetness – smaller than conventional blueberries and somehow tasting also of both the earth and the salt air – and for months afterward made muffins, a serving of Maine for breakfast.

Can you believe that I don’t have a single photograph from that vacation? My mother didn’t own a camera, had to practically go into hock just to take us there to stay in a house borrowed from a friend.

I’d love to take the boys to Vinalhaven of course, although I’m certain that it would be impossible to really have the same kind of experience there. Our plugged-in world has changed too much and we would have computers and phones and all the things that connect us to each other (to say nothing of indoor plumbing, which I wouldn’t regret). But maybe if I was lucky I could recreate the same kind of simple joy.

I can picture them on the beach just like me and Sheila, ranging the rocky shore and picking up piece after piece of beach glass and running back to show me each new treasure, each more beautiful than the last. Like my own mother before me I would let them bring home bags of this booty, muted soft shades of green, brown, white, with the occasional cobalt piece as thrilling to find as a diamond. They would make the car smell of the sea and at home we would fill jars and put them on the windowsills, our own sacred reminder of sky and sea and the pleasure of being together as a family in a beautiful place.

What are your Monday dreams? Please feel free to share a link to your own inspiration below, making sure you link directly to your post, not your site’s homepage and that you link back to this post. Questions? See About Monday Dreaming.

Photos of misty harbor, cottage, and shore courtesy hmcfabulous via Flickr.

Photos of Main Street and swimming hole courtesy of tiny banquet via Flickr.