On the coast of Maine, I built a life of my own and sought peace. One Christmas Eve, sharing what I found there with my Dad was a long-awaited gift for us both.
The days leading up to Christmas 1999 brought the expected excitement and bustle — plus an extra, heaping dose of anxiety for me. My dad was on the road, driving northeast from Cleveland out to my apartment on the Maine coast.
I worried about this visit, starting with the trip. Jacked up on coffee, he’d drive 14 hours straight. By that Christmas, I was 29, and we were just a few years into rebuilding our relationship. Our conversations had been sparse and tense for a long time. Our visits forced. The year before, he’d driven out to visit me for the first time in the 10 years I’d left home for college in Boston.
This Christmas would be my first away from home. Instead of traveling to Cleveland, I’d see my mom and family on New Year’s Day, the start of a warm-weather vacation together.
Dad had decided to drive out to Maine. Just the two of us over those few days. No other people to buffer. No other place to go besides my two-room apartment. Whatever happened, whatever arguments erupted, we’d have to work it out.
Scents of Adventure
The front seat of my dad’s car smelled of leather, gasoline, Marlboros, coffee and a touch of Old Spice. Since I was a little girl, that blend of scents has signaled anticipation, some danger — and my adoration.
My dad, David Lee, relished driving. He was boyish, charming and funny. He could make me laugh, tease me to tears and infuriate me.
He loved cars and driving fast. He was prone to road rage and within seconds could spike from relaxed to furious. Conversations between my divorced parents often ended abruptly, with a smash of the phone back in its cradle. I’d watched as arguments quickly escalated and my dad bolted out the door, slamming it behind him and squealing his tires as he peeled out of the driveway.
He was volatile, not violent.
My dad, I’ve come to believe, truly wanted to be a family man — but could not control his impulses. He loved women, and his cheating had led to the failure of two marriages. The shattering of both families left me crushed and angry with someone I couldn’t help but love.
He left the day-to-day care and heavy lifting of raising his two daughters to his ex-wives. Still, he loved us. He’d never stopped calling me or trying to reconcile, despite my anger and need for distance.
Now, I suspect that had a lot to do with his longtime girlfriend, a quiet mender I’d once called the Ice Queen. But I barely knew her then. (Read more about that here, in the story
“Ms. Judgement and the Ice Queen.”)
Better Get Started
Dad safely arrived in Maine a couple of days before Christmas, and soon demanded to know where he could find the apricot, almond, white chocolate biscotti I bake for the holidays.
The blade of my food processor had cracked and I could not make the addictive cookies he loved to dunk in his coffee.
You don’t just run out and buy a new food processor, Dad, I reasoned.
But he did.
He’d scratched enough lotto tickets to win some cash, and went right to the store. Your phone sucks, he said when I got home from work, explaining the box with a new cordless phone.
It was on the kitchen counter, beside a box with a new food processor.
There, he said. You can make biscotti now.
“Dad,” I reasoned. “That takes several hours. You have to bake it twice, and cool it completely after the first bake.”
“Well, you’d better get started then.”
Seeking Peace
I settled on the coast of Maine, to build a life of my own and search for peace. Every morning, I found it beside the water.
Just south of the small town of Bath, Maine, the road leads out to an opening of big blue sky and water as it curves over a dam, around an ample cove on the western shore of the mighty Kennebec River. This spot is known as Winnegance, a Native American, Abenaki name that means “little portage.”
Great blue herons fish the cove’s exposed mud flats at low tide on the salty, river side of the dam. In the summer, we kayaked through the cattails on the small, freshwater lake created decades earlier by the dam.
Every weekend after Thanksgiving, the retired sea captain on our side of the cove and a neighbor across the water raced each other to be the first to light a small Christmas tree with colored bulbs. Those twin brightly lit trees popped against the dark night as I drove around the cove, the final stretch of my commute home from work.
Even in the winter, my mornings began with a short walk, cup of coffee in hand, down the lane, past the sea captain’s house, and an old rusty shed to the shore of the river. I settled on an overturned skiff — a small wooden rowboat — to watch the tide move in or out a bit more with every small wave, looking up to take in the full expanse of blue sky and blue water stretching out to the pines across the river.
Watch. Think. Breathe.
Then a swift jaunt through the woods along the river, crossing over to the lake trails, stopping at a favorite spot on a log beside the lake. Scoot home, now warm from walking, and off to work.
Messy Guest
My in-law apartment on the end of an old Greek revival house was two stacked rooms. Downstairs, a living room, kitchen across the back wall with a big counter and a tiny bathroom in the corner. Upstairs, a bedroom, and closet with a washer and dryer. A compact, smart design, thanks to the carpenter/landlord who lived in the main house with his family.
Dad slept with my orange tiger cat on a pull-out futon downstairs. My upstairs windows offered views of glowing afternoon sunsets over the lake and in the mornings, herons fishing the river cove.
I can be messy, but need to clean up daily to a certain order: A clear kitchen counter. Dishes done. The sofa blankets folded and pillows arranged. Tidy.
My dad was like Pigpen from Peanuts. He traveled within a certain swirling flotsam of clutter, a challenge to the necessary order in my space.
The evening before Christmas Eve, I’d just cleaned up and cleared the kitchen counter, pausing to appreciate that small, calming patch of welcome order. His radar must have picked up an empty spot. He walked over and dumped his pockets full of crumpled scratch lotto tickets, books of matches, receipts and loose change all over the counter.
So frustrating — and I told him so.
But my squawking was a score for him. Negative attention, after all, is still attention. He was 51, and still like a little kid, eager for attention, taunting, teasing.
Ignoring him only worked for so long. He was relentless. Eventually, he’d set me off, and then celebrate his small victory. It was tiring.
— then shared the peace of my sanctuary,
The Ice Skater
Christmas Eve arrived with bitter, single-digit cold. I had the day off, so dad and I walked my routine loop over the packed snow, and had almost reached my spot beside the lake when we spotted the ice skater through the trees.
A man glided on the lake’s frozen surface with a hand-held power drill, stopping to measure the thickness of the ice, presumably checking to see whether skating would be part of the coming festivities.
The skater looked up from his task and spotted us watching him from the shoreline. He waved to us, and called “Merry Christmas.” We returned the greeting. “Merry Christmas.” We waved back.
Dad already sounded wistful, his voice registering that the moment held significance — though we couldn’t fully understand it then.
Something so wonderful about those intense moments of peace over those days stuck with both of us — because years later dad would say: Remember that Christmas in Maine? Remember that ice skater? Your neighbors and that little church?
Sweet Lift
We drove that night through the dark, cold night toward the tall pines on the other side of the river, to a late-night candlelight service at my neighbors’ tiny church.
Near the end of the service, a soprano exquisitely sang “O Holy Night,” her crystal clear voice perfectly piercing the darkness, rising into the peak of the simple wood ceiling, lifting us all toward the stars.
On Christmas, we cooked lobsters and a beef roast rolled in peppercorns in my tiny kitchen and shared our dinner with one invited guest at a little, glass-topped table in the corner of my living room.
Surely, there was at least one more walk in-between the cleanup and post-dinner napping and leftovers.
When my dad drove away after Christmas, I immediately, painfully missed him all over again.
Despite our tension, what I most remember of that visit is a sense of peace my dad and I desperately needed together, to help us heal. Walking through the woods. Seeing the ice skater. Cooking Maine lobsters for Christmas dinner.
One visit at a time, my dad and I rebuilt, and enjoyed a pretty good relationship.
Ten years after that Christmas, when my dad was sick and in a medical coma, I held his hand and softly talked to him about the ice skater and all the energy of a sunrise. Stay with us, I begged him.
When my dad was dying a few years later, to calm and comfort us both amidst tremendous pain and fear, I’d quietly remind him of the ice skater and our Christmas in Maine. Let go into the peace, I urged.
Now, I am 51, and lucky to listen to the exquisite voice of a friend and woman in our church family who is an opera singer sing “O Holy Night.”
Through the Christmas season, those sounds transport me back through a few life chapters to the coast of Maine. I pause. I remember that Christmas Eve, when the music lifted my Dad and I, among a small group of people bundled and huddled against the cold.
My peace I give unto you. Always — and especially at Christmas.
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