A Lobster's Paradise

Yesterday, I had to beat back fantasies of running away immediately for the Maine coast. I could feel my fingers tighten around the steering wheel as my brain uncontrollably calculated just how long it would take me to drive there from Detroit.

When we lived in New Hampshire, we went to York, Maine, every week from April to October. Though the bookend months were bitterly cold on the water, we went anyway with our sandy blanket, our packed lunch, our books for reading and our beach togs. We would make our way out to the farthest end of Long Beach and stake our claim to a parcel of soggy sand where we would complete several cycles of sleeping and eating and splashing in the frigid waters before packing it into the car, sun-soaked and thick-headed, for home.

There are moments, fairly frequent moments, when I am dissatisfied with my life and it is in those fleeting seconds (or minutes) of contemplation when the urge to run strikes me. Stress can be a trigger, shame and the perception of failure. Also, a warm day with autumn in the air can bring it on, or an accent in someone's voice as they pass. A movie can do it or a book.

In the case of yesterday, it was having just finished Diary by Chuck Palahniuk and then emerging into a crisp, cool day that suggested fall was right around the corner. Thinking of New England island life because of the book and remembering with bittersweet enthusiasm the leaves turning, I just wanted to go home. I kept wondering, bewildered for an afternoon, what I was doing here, where I thought I was going. Ancestral voices chided me for venturing so far from my birthplace, for clutching at the world, for looking for happiness anywhere else.

I am desperate to go back, if even for a day.