The Thrust

The Thrust

McGrath Pond

Roland and Esther are gone for the week. They generously offered their house to us. It is right on the water of McGrath/McGraw Pond. This morning, Margot and I went out to the dock. The water was still, and the fog blocked our view of the opposite shore. Some fishermen trawled past, and far off, someone was trying to water ski. Margot is learning about ripples and how they travel toward us. I tried to read some Eliot, but it didn't go very well, because Margot was busy making drinks out of pond water and pine needles.
Roland and Esther's place is only about 5 minutes from Joan's house where we've been staying. We arrived last night after a long day of burning all the whatnot from the trees Ty and I cut down last weekend. Cleveland came up from Boston to help us with all that, and we had a fine, hot, smoky time. He's just come up stairs to join Margot and me, and he has admitted that he's sore - poor city feller.
Anyway, it's good to be here, taking a week off from work at the house. Perhaps I'll have a bit more time to write about what's been going on. Perhaps not. There are so many books to read and poems to write, after all.
Tomorrow I have an interview at Trinity Catholic School for a position as their 6, 7, and 8 grade religion teacher. We'll see how that goes. I've no experience and no teaching certificate, but given the need for a renewal in Catholic education and a more robust catechesis, maybe I'll have a shot. I'll post updates on that as I have them.

New Photos from Maine

What follows is nothing less than an onslaught of cuteness. Margot gets short shrift - but just by a little. We're trying to take as many photos of Eloise as we can, not wanting to leave her in the dust just because she's so quiet, good-natured, and, well, not the first born. Eloise's photo count is painfully shy of the bjillions my mother took of Margot. But we're trying, for the record. And as you'll see below, I'm glad we did. With daughters like this, who needs anything else? Except baseball, maybe. And a little PBR.

Slogging

We have been in Maine for 2 weeks. Three of our days here have been partly to mostly sunny. This, after we'd spent so much time bragging on the climate of Maine as compared to the dismal heat and humidity of Kentucky and parts farther south. It has been wet, wet, wet. And we're all feeling a little down about it. Things have become so aquatic that, yesterday, as Derek and I were chopping and hauling wood, and the sun came out, we both stared up into the sky, curious about what that bright, hot, white thing was shining through the clouds.
There's been so much rain and cloud up here that I've even begun to talk about the weather with folks. And weather-talk, socially, is the big no-no of my generation - a sure sign that a person has nothing much else to say, that the conversation has been, is and is going, nowhere.
But the rain has not stopped us. There's a lot of work to do up here. On top of the review writing and my lame attempts to continue studying though I'm out of school, we've got quite a list of house projects. For those of you interested in such things, here's a decently representative list:

1. Finish the sub-floor in the basement.
2. Finish hanging sheet rock in the basement.
3. Find suitable flooring and install it on top of the sub-floor in the basement.
4. Paint two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen/dining area, the shutters, and the trim on the shed.
5. Disappear the big, messy flowerbed in the front.
6. Fill in the gaping absence left by the demise of the pool in the backyard.
7. Cut down another messy pine tree.
8. Plant a flower garden outside Jo's kitchen window.
9. Re-roof the whole place.
10. Fix the gutters.

That should be enough to keep us busy for the summer. We're really happy to be filling in the gap here for Joan. She can't get to all this by herself. And anyway, when we finally own our own home, we'll have some experience and a few extra tools for the job.
(Ryan, I have already used some of the tools you gave me. And that impactor drill makes hanging the sheet rock easy as pie).
As life would have it, we continue to be surrounded by great people - just fewer now that we've left that gaggle in Wilmore.
Ty left his family behind to come up and help fell a tree.
Derek has been tremendously willing and helpful around the place. And he works for free! What a bum.
The Cleve told me he'd drive up for a work weekend whenever we need it.
And soon, the re-roofing of the place will be an entire-family affair.
But there's a lot of sorrow involved in seeing the house in this shape - especially for Hannah. It's where she grew up, after all. And there's nothing clearer, more poignant, more startling than thinking about the last 5 years and seeing a big hole in the back yard, the shingles crinkling up on the roof, the floor and walls all ripped up in the basement. Nothing can undo what has happened. The pool is gone. The flood happened. The roof is old. The family has changed. But this is no reason for despair. We work forward in hope, move that way with a great deal of improvisation, and trust that the repairs we are able to make will suffice to make life seem normal again.

In Sidney

After a long and rather painful goodbye to all of our friends in Wilmore, we moved to Sidney. This is roughly the route we took, for those of you who are interested (Grant). The only variations we made were amendments to the speed limit (the 24' truck we rented did a solid 40 mph through the mountains) and an overnight stay at Cleveland's folks' house in quaint Telford, PA.
The girls are doing fine. Every night, Margot asks for the story of daddy and Nathan and the little green car and the big truck, which is an abbreviated and not altogether truthful account of how I rented the Budget truck, loaded up our stuff, and drove out to Maine with the Cleve in tow.
We are very thankful for the opportunity to live with Joan (Hannah's mom) for a while. We will be trying to accomplish various maintenance projects around the house while I continue my vague and tenuous web job. The global economy is, of course, not helping our chances of further employment. But the Maine economy, especially, has been rather dismal for some time now. I get the sense that, if you don't have scads of money and can afford a house with a view of the Atlantic, then you don't live the life landlubbers associate with Maine and all other points Northeast.
Regardless, we'll make a go of it. And that will be hard without the Brookses, the Caldwells, the DeLattes, the Harolds, the Harshmans, the Hersheys, the Logans, the Mostroms, the Raborns, Jake the Snake, the Strebecks, Dickweed, St. Luke's parish, and of course, Emily and Grant. Neither Hannah nor I want to go through that part of it all, but the transition has already been made so much easier because of the family that has received us and the joy we're both feeling to be near Derek and Cleveland again, Hilary, Brooks, Jasmine, and any of Hannah's other friends who will climb out of the woodwork of her long previous life here.
This entry is taking on the tone of a speech in which I'm trying to thank all the people who have gotten me here. But in a very real way, the three years we spent in seminary were a communal effort, and Hannah and I have both shuddered at the thought of where we could have ended up had we not moved to Wilmore. Our hearts were restless toward the end of our stay in Rochester back in 2006, and we did not know much about anything. But we did know what St. Augustine knows so well: that our hearts are restless until they find rest in God. Because we have finally gotten it through our thick skulls that this is the purpose of life, it is right and well to give thanks for all the people who have helped along the way.
More later, if they continue to offer the www this far north.