Running Away to Maine

I ran away from home, something I intended to do over 30 years ago.  When I was 15, my father talked me out of it with  threats of a dangerous world.  In retrospect, staying at home with an emotionally abusive father and angry, manipulative mother turned out to be just as dangerous.  Then, because I was still afraid and battered by my childhood, I proceeded to stay not-so-happily married - but sheltered nonetheless- for 16 more years.  Now, at 45, I left.

Recently, my son went off to college and my ex-husband proposed raising our 15 year-old-daughter alone-- a ploy to get away from a controlling, live-in girlfriend who has wanted to marry him for several years now.   Since I wanted to get away, he gave me the opportunitty to do so... right away.  The decision to leave my life at a moment's notice left me racked with anxiety. Yet,  I rose to the challenge, gave away everything I owned, and asked my sister if I could stay in her NYC studio while I plotted my move to Maine.

At first, I didn't know where to start a new life. I thought of Europe, but I wanted to live on the continent with a European and magnanimous lover who would introduce me to its wonders. When things fell through with my Danish lover, I thought of Maine.

Maine is my last frontier. Unlike Alaska, I love its civility, lighthouses and sweet small cities.  Yet, it is at the end of a continent; it has dared me to come, even though it whispered its invite. All my life it haunted me in picture books, movies, and the here and there fiction of romance and adventures. I've heard stor;ies of its brutal winters; its fabled Presidents' lair and playground to the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers; wild lands/parks that can only be reached by water; eccentric townspeople, and dangerous wildlife; the mid-wife who delivered babies in its post revolutionary wilderness; and seafood festival that cook everything it finds in its ocean.

Maine is to me a mystery and an antidote to a life of too much raising of the kids, insomnia, television, billboards, confusion, mid-life and noise. I belong in Maine, if only for a while. I will be free in Maine, if only for awhile.