October 15, 2005

Harbors



To celebrate Craig's 26th birthday I flew to Hartford from Detroit and we drove the 8 hour road trip to Bar Harbor, ME. Since youth I'd had this terrific fantasy of Maine, the crashing ocean, the cliffs, the dense air. I had never, however, dreamed of living thousands of miles away from the person I most adored and borrowing a handful of days once a month to remind ourselves how to experience happiness with each other. This being said, the 8 hours in the car proved to be an ideal and much needed segue into our beautiful birthday getaway.*Our bed and breakfast perfectly suited the area: small, quaint, lovely. Our room was in a newly renovated house in the back yard of the main house. Our host and hostess provided us with information about sight seeing, as well as interesting breakfasts both mornings we were present (I seem to recall one morning deli ham spread with cream cheese and wrapped around golden raisins, which, since raisins are steadfast my least favorite thing ever, were difficult for me to digest but Craig whispered across the breakfast table It Was Only Polite that I Eat Them). Acadia National Park was breathtaking: the ocean indeed crashes there, the cliffs jut like defiant jaws. We indulged in unbelievable sea food, which included but was not limited to an eye-opening whole lobster experience illustrating precisely why neither of us eat lobster often (if only I could exactly describe the frozen stunned repulsion in his expression the moment he removed the tail from his lobster and the green organs flowed like an unappetizing river onto his plate!) His "birthday" dinner was complimented by a traditional Caesar salad constructed before us on a food cart, complete with an anchovy in its dressing, and was followed by blueberry souffle. During this trip to Maine we also made the mistake of ordering "popovers": light puffy muffin things that cost too much money and taste like nothing (Craig was mad!) We managed to become instant "regulars" at a local bar called Route 66, where we met various colorful people, including a gentleman wandering the country writing a book and a couple with their giant dog named Zeus. We spent afternoons hiking in Acadia, taking it all in. Our last morning in Maine we woke before the sun and drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain to see the sun rise. If there were words to explain the waves of simultaneous pleasure and pain I felt experiencing such an amazing several days with Craig while knowing the whole while it would be coming to an end which would find me settled into the plane leaving Hartford for Detroit, this would be the time to paint that emotion. Nonetheless, I don't regret a thing about the way we handled things.*At 26, Craig saw his second Broadway show on Broadway, this time starring Anne Heche! He made his first Thanksgiving turkey away from home. He ice skated in Central Park, saw the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden. He took the train from New Haven into the City. He saw Judy Chicago's installation piece, "The Dinner Party," at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. He took a subway from Manhattan to a friend's party in Brooklyn. He drove a convertible from Phoenix to Las Vegas while it hailed. He stood up in his cousin's wedding that same weekend out west. He spent a weekend in a cabin in New Hampshire, saw the White Mountains' esteemed Man of the Mountain weeks before the famed profile fell off the mountain! When Craig was 26, he opened his first sports venue: University of Connecticut's football stadium. He was subsequently transferred to Syracuse, NY.*26 was another busy year for Craig, filled with travel, work, family, friends and parts of me, all for which I am eternally grateful.

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