When I began writing
When I began writing “Port Anna” in the summer of 2020, I wasn’t sure when—or if—I would get back to Maine. There was so much fear surrounding any interaction with strangers that the distance between North Carolina and Maine seemed too vast and too fraught to travel. Motels and gas stations were closed. It felt too dangerous to stay with friends.
And we had been told to stay away. There weren’t enough hospital beds and even fewer respirators. Maine’s aging population was vulnerable. Full-time residents were understandably wary of license plates ‘from away.’ (Caitlin Shetterly’s book, “Pete and Alice in Maine,” takes on this subject well. In the first third of the book, someone deposits a tree trunk at the bottom of the driveway, effectively preventing them from leaving until the two weeks of quarantine pass.)
Maine’s coastline had always been a source of strength for me. Even as a child, listening to my parents’ protracted arguments, I pulled a pillow over my head and summoned images of the rough-hewn rocks and silent woods to comfort myself. By adulthood, it had become a habit. I collected details—the shape of the fir branches, the colors of the mosses, the pale ghost pipes that grew in the loam, the gray and brown shells that collected in the tidal pools—a glossary I could pull out and study when things were hard.
And those first months of the pandemic were hard. People died. So many were sick. Doctors were exhausted, our healthcare system visibly overwhelmed. And my daughter began her residency as an internal medicine doctor in July of 2020. For obvious reasons, we couldn’t see each other. At night, I fought off images of a spiky green virus invading her lungs, bringing her—and us—to her knees. All I wanted was to sit on the shoreline and breathe, soothed, however briefly, by the scent of briny ocean and the feel of granite beneath me.
So, I decided, if I couldn’t go, I would conjure it. I hope I have passed some of the vast healing properties of that beautiful place to you, too.
