Childhood: Part 8,672

Gosh, it feels great to be home. The wedding was fabulous... the Bub was break-dancing at the reception, seriously... not sure where he picked up the moves, but he definitely stole the show that night... the coast of New England rainy, foggy and cold... we never did get to go on the puffin/whale watching boat trip because of the weather... though we saw eider ducks, grebes and sea gulls aplenty... plus the Hub/Bub followed a pair of wild turkeys and their brood into the woods. But, what I wanted to talk about here today is walking with ghosts.

As you may or may not know, I am slowly and laboriously, writing a memoir about my broken childhood. The weird thing about the act of doing this is that you have to reach beyond the cocktail party stories you've perfected from a lifetime of retelling and step back into untapped memories that have been buried away in your subconscious for years. You begin writing and the most fleeting thought spills out and turns into a whole series of memories you hadn't thought about... probably ever as a memory, only in the moment.

This happens with places too, and so it was that without even thinking about it, I found myself in the part of New England that is riddled with such landscape reminders. My parents met and fell in love in New England. My father worked at a boarding school in Maine and after they got hitched, my mom moved there to build a life and have babies. She loved New England. Years later after my sisters were born and they moved around for work and I was born and my parent's relationship fell apart, it was to Maine where my mother returned... bringing me and my sisters back there the summer after they split. We lived in a house right by the water. We swam in the freezing cold Atlantic. We collected Maine rocks and star fish and sea urchins. We hung out with my mother's old artist friends. It was perfect except for one fatal flaw. He was gone.

When I returned this trip, I sporadically phoned my mom to locate the landmarks... The lobster pound in Kittery on Chauncy Creek where we used to eat on the water. The house in Ogunquit. Kennebunk Port and its streets and galleries. We never did make it to The Berwicks where my family lived and worked... but it was probably better that way. And always, I talked of the Swingy Bridge... I thought I spotted it a couple of times here and there, laughing and driving the Hub/Bub around, showing them the sites. But it wasn't until we rounded a corner in York, Maine, that I saw it and remembered.

Called the smallest suspension bridge in the world, the real name is the Wiggly Bridge, a tiny walking bridge that literally jiggles as you walk across... and that summer after my parents divorced, it was my favorite spot in the whole universe. My sisters and I loved to walk across it over and over again and hide up in the woods just beyond. It was a magical world for me. A bridge to a secret, special place.

As we got out of the car, and it came closer into view... I got choked up. Watching my son run down the rock-lined path over the water leading out to it, I could almost hear the giggles of innocence from my sisters and me. The damp air and the memories flooding back. It was like having my heart broken all over again. There I was standing in the exact spot where, not much older than the Bub is now, my life changed course irreparably.

This is what fascinates me so thoroughly about childhood. It holds the key to all that is right and wrong in our lives. To the mysteries of who we are and how we came to be in this moment. It is not the past exactly, for too much of it is bound up forever in the present. It is the elephant in the room. The tree that grows quietly in the back yard. It is the beginning and end of everything.

Of course, as soon as we were on the bridge, I took out my camera and began to snap away... to which the Bub guffawed, "Awwww Mom, life is for living, not for taking pictures."

I scooped him up in my arms and held him tight and vowed never, ever, ever to leave him. How could I abandon this perfection?