We received some crushing news this week, insofar as news about something as unnecessary as a vacation house can actually carry that much weight. The house next door to our family’s place in coastal Maine went on the market for the first time in 45 years. We’ve wanted it for a very long time, and it really looked like we were going to be able to make it happen. But we lost it.
We’re outrageously lucky to have the opportunity to be sad about something this silly, but I am sad nevertheless.
I don’t have roots in Maine — this is all Matt’s side of the family — but we’ve been going during the summer for the last 15 years, and I really love it. It feels surprisingly like home to me in a way nowhere else does. Obviously DC is very much our home. But it’s a home we made as adults.
I spent the first 18 years of my life on a ranch in rural East Texas, but my parents left when I went to college. And I don’t blame them, the Hill Country is a much nicer place to live. But it’s also quite far from where I grew up, so their leaving made it nearly impossible to go back home. I did (and still do, occasionally) try to visit, but in the last 23 years, I’ve only been back four times. Most recently, I dragged Matt and Jose down there for a wedding five years ago,1 and it was lovely to be see everyone and to take my child to his first Dairy Queen. But it was also a little sad.
My childhood memories are full of towering pine forests and quaint towns, but my last visit was my first in well over a decade, and nothing quite matched what I remembered.
I’m sure they must’ve always been cutting down trees somewhere nearby, since half my friends’ dads were gainfully employed as loggers. But all the places I remembered driving through or playing in seemed to be in a particularly sparse stage of the forestry cycle, because everything just felt so small during our visit. And I’d never have described my hometown as nice, but I didn’t remember it being quite this dismal.
I do wish I could’ve gotten a picture of the high school football stadium, though, because that, of course, is as majestic as ever.
Which is all just to say that it’s the kind of place that isn’t easy — logistically or emotionally — to visit. I’ve kept in touch with people from high school and from my church, and obviously people are more important than places. But once I left home, it never really felt like I had one to go back to.
This place in Maine really does feel like home, though. We have so many good memories, mostly of family visits over the last decade. But we were also able to spend a peaceful six weeks there during the otherwise plague and tear-gas and anxiety filled summer of 2020. And then later that year, we drove back up for Christmas so I could take a few weeks off from what had turned into a grueling pandemic school year.2 We had to drive back on January 7, 2021, uncertain what was going on in DC, and it’s never in my life been so hard to make myself leave a place.
We’ll still visit family there during the summer, but I’d been so excited to make this place that feels so much like home into our actual home.
When I wrote last week about all the ways it felt like we were wrapping up for the summer, I almost included summer shopping on the list. But I’m glad I didn’t, because I bought an embarrassing amount of stuff this week. This was partly because I was sad and am a more emotional shopper than I generally care to admit, and partly because I’m diligent about returning online purchases and therefore tend to make them with abandon.
I am proud to say that only one of the many dresses I bought (again, I remind both you and me, in my most stern voice, that most of these are going back) is linen. It’s from Doen, and I’m not optimistic about the fit. I’m also normally not inclined to pay full price for this brand because it’s very easy to find their stuff secondhand… but it’s very pretty.
If you’re in the market for better deals, I think Mango is fantastic this summer. They don’t nail it every year, but when they do, it’s my favorite place for reasonably priced summer dresses. I’m trying this (I’m generally over cut-outs but am kind of into these) and this (not my typical style, but I wanted to try something new), along with this denim dress that I’m 85 percent certain will be made of unpleasant material but am gambling on that 15 percent chance that it’s great.
I also more responsibly acquired this gently used Rachel Comey bag after finally getting around to consigning a giant pile of clothes I no longer wear. It feels perfect for someone who only ever really wants to wear black but needs to make some small concession to the fact that it’s summer.
This week I’m taking another crack at Rachel Khong’s Real Americans. It’s no fault of the book’s, but I’ve been having trouble building any momentum on this one and am hoping the third time’s the charm. I read All Fours by Miranda July in Montreal and have surprisingly few (and definitely mixed) feelings about it. It was fine? I know reading fiction is supposed to improve our capacity for empathy, but this was one of those books that mostly left me wondering what the hell is up with Californians.
I’m almost done re-reading Rendezvous with Rama for book club (enjoyable, but not my favorite Clarke) and started, at my friend Tom’s recommendation, Turing’s Cathedral. I’m not very far in, but I read and liked Benjamin Labatut’s The MANIAC in January, and this feels like a nice complement. I’m also wrapping up the Rivers of London series that’s been my insomnia go-to over the last few months. I like it more than when I began, but still not enough to recommend, unless we happen to have the exact same taste in trash books.
Speaking of trash books (and I use the word trash lovingly), one of my favorite writers of genre fiction has a series that is sort of a mad-cap mash-up of historical romance and fantasy, and I really enjoyed the first one last summer. I recently noticed the second one is coming out in August, and I’m looking forward to it. I think it would make a perfect last-week-of-summer read, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Finally, I made this tres leches cake for my birthday on Friday, and it was great. This is one where you really want to use weights not volumes, and you have to power through a weirdly thick batter stage, but it’s otherwise pretty straightforward.
It’s never not funny to me to see them (mostly Matt) in such a rural area. Ask me about the time I made him spend a long weekend at a camp outside of Lafayette, Louisiana.
I may write about our wild 2020-21 kindergarten pod at some point, maybe once all the people I know in real life no longer have to deal with me processing it out loud, which shouldn’t take more than another four years. Five, max.