Last week, my husband, our two dogs, and I headed to Maine to spend some time with my parents. I was fully prepared to relax. I brought a stack of books and planned to sit outside, enjoy the lake, explore a few towns, eat good food, and generally do as little as possible. After a busy summer of releases, promotions, and more, I thought I’d earned it.
Maine apparently had other plans for me.
Things started going sideways when my mom threw her back out the day after we arrived. Naturally, that changed the dynamic of the trip
because she was hurting and couldn’t move around normally, so there was a lot
of checking on her and adjusting plans. Still, George and I figured we could
roll with it. We were all together, we were in Maine, and there were plenty of
other things we could do.
Oh, silly, naïve Sarah. I don’t know what happened to
the refreshing Maine summers of my childhood, but this was not one of them. For
the first week of August, it was oppressively hot, the kind of heat where you
walk outside and immediately regret every decision that brought you to that
particular moment in your life.
Then we lost power.
Thankfully, my parents have a generator, so this wasn’t
quite the disaster it could have been. The problem was that the generator
couldn’t run everything in the house at the same time. Choices had to be made,
and when it’s a bazillion degrees outside, air-conditioning wins. Hot water is
a luxury. But oddly enough, as the week continued, the generator eventually
became preferable to having actual electricity. You see, once power came back
on, the electric company started having brownouts across the state. The Maine
community Facebook pages were flooded with complaints and horror stories. For
our family, we technically "had" electricity, but there wasn’t enough
of it for the air conditioners to run at full capacity. So, we went from having
no power, to generator power that could run the AC but no hot water, to real
power that couldn’t run the AC as well as the generator. Nothing says “relaxing
Maine vacation” quite like discussing whether you’d rather have fully
functioning air-conditioning or hot water while Central Maine Power struggles
to provide enough electricity to accomplish either.
As if the heat and power situation weren’t enough, George
and I briefly thought our credit card had been stolen. Late one night, our
credit card company called to ask whether we were making purchases at a Texas
Target, which sent us into a spiral of checking charges, wondering what had
been compromised, and mentally preparing to deal with fraud while on vacation.
Except it turned out the card being used was our old credit card. The one that
was already inactive. Yep. That’s right. After all that
concern, there was literally nothing for us to do. No stolen card. No active
fraud on an account we use. Just a pointless little burst of panic dropped into
the middle of an already chaotic week.
Meanwhile, we had four dogs sharing one old farmhouse. For
those keeping score, George and I brought Eevee and Itto, while my parents have
Louise (a Shih Tzu) and Niko (a German Shepherd). These dogs do not share a
beautiful friendship. Every visit becomes a complicated system of who can be in
what room, who needs to go outside, and why everyone is suddenly mouthing off. I
often felt less like someone on vacation and more like the manager of a very
poorly organized doggy daycare. Thank goodness my parents installed heavy-duty
dog gates in all the doorways after our visit last Christmas. Lessons learned!
We still had sightseeing plans, though. What could go wrong
with a little tourism? With that positive outlook, George and I headed to
Rockland to wander around Main Street. Rockland is exactly the kind of coastal
Maine town where you expect to spend a Wednesday afternoon popping into cute
shops, looking at art, grabbing something to eat, and generally enjoying
yourself. Except almost everything was closed. George and I walked around
staring into darkened storefronts wondering if we had somehow missed an announcement
to shelter in place. Every time we spotted somewhere that looked interesting,
we’d walk up to the door and discover that, nope, apparently, that place didn’t
want to see us either.
But the whole reason we were in Maine this particular week
was to celebrate my dad’s birthday. As part of the fun, we made reservations at
a fancy local restaurant we'd yet to try. This was supposed to be one of our
big outings. We’d get dressed up, have a lovely dinner, and enjoy a nice
evening together. Sounds great, right? Wrong. On the morning of my dad's
birthday, we got a call. Not to wish him a happy birthday, but to tell us that
the restaurant was closing because of the heat. Yes. It was apparently so hot
in Maine that even the restaurant decided it had had enough. At this point, the
trip was beginning to feel slightly cursed.
Thankfully, one outing went as planned. Rallying after the
canceled birthday plans, the four of us piled into the car, drove forty-five
minutes to Hallowell and had a wonderful meal at The Liberal Cup (such a great
name for a cozy mystery locale). It was a restaurant my dad had long wanted to
visit, and we figured, if not now, then when? The food was great, we got to
relax, and for a little while, nothing broke, closed, lost power, injured
itself, triggered a fraud alert, or otherwise went dramatically wrong. It was
glorious.
Despite how all these mishaps make the trip sound, we really
did have an enjoyable stay. Maybe it wasn’t the relaxing Maine vacation I’d
envisioned, but we were together. We laughed a lot, ate well, spent time by the
lake, and somehow found plenty of good moments tucked between all the things
that didn’t go according to plan. By the end of the week, I realized those were
probably the moments I’d remember anyway. That’s the funny thing about family
vacations. You can plan where you’re going, what you’re doing, and where you’re
eating, but you can’t plan what happens once everyone gets there. Sometimes the
trips that go completely off script become the stories you tell the longest.
Someday, I’m sure someone will say, “Remember that vacation in Maine…?” and
we’ll all laugh, conveniently forgetting how exasperated we were while living
through it. Then, eventually, someone will suggest we do it all again. And we
will. Because it’s family, and getting together is always worth the trip.
But next year, I’m bringing lower expectations.
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