Summer Notebooks #2

A long weekend in Maine.

First, welcome to all of the new subscribers. You’re going to enjoy all of the book talk and travel tidbits around here. Also, we kinda worship summer. Welcome!!

Maybe I’ve said it before, but I feel the need to dig my feet in the sand when visiting all of the beach towns I love every summer. This past weekend, I had the awful punishment (wink, wink) of bringing my daughter to camp in Maine. My mom tagged along with my 11-year-old and me, and we centered our time in Kennebunkport, one of the prettiest towns in the state. Camden is tied with Kennebunkport for me; further north, Mount Desert Island and I share the same soul.

We arrived midafternoon at The Wanderer, a cottage-style resort a few minutes bike ride to the wide open vistas of Gooch’s Beach and the highly walkable downtown. Everything about the decor of this Travel & Leisure recommended hotel screamed Our Last Vineyard Summer, meaning it was my style with a capital S. Bamboo cane furnishings? Check. Navy and white bedding? Check. Black and white vintage framed photographs of surfers? Triple check. They had beach cruisers on hand, and outside our screened door was a vintage-feeling square pool with games to play if you’re tired of reading a book on the lounger. My mom and daughter played Yahtzee. I dug into my book: Grant Grinder’s So Old, So Young.

My mom also immediately took out her MOMA portable vase and cut snowball hydrangea to arrange inside. SO MY MOM. And she got a hundred compliments on her flowy, bright pink sundress.

Most of the first day was spent shopping. There are Lily Pulitzer dresses in nearly every clothing store—and my daughter picked a special dress for our family vacation in Martha’s Vineyard in August. There were tiny round dishes with lemons painted on them, driftwood signs with the names of beaches, cozy sweatshirts with the old Maine flag, salt water taffy, and straw hats alongside beaded earrings and silver bangles. My absolute favorite store was Dannah, which seemed to have a new treasure on every shelf and corner.

Lupine Books was a stunner. Even though it was small, it had a lovely stock and I picked up Jenny Jackson’s latest off the front table. Also spotted: Jo Piazza’s The Parisian Heist and Ellen Baker’s Summerland Cove, both on my list. A few minutes after leaving the shop, I received news that Our Last Vineyard Summer was named by People magazine as one of the best books to read if you liked The Five Star Weekend. OMG. I was floating.

That night, we drove twenty minutes to the Ogunquit Theater to see a summer stock production of “Hello, Dolly.” OH MY GOODNESS. It was like watching a Broadway show; I had no idea these summer productions in New England were this high quality. There was an actor from “Gossip Girl,” another from “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” and many other stars. We met a young actor who had driven up from Boston just to see it.

My mom couldn’t stop eating lobster rolls; the one at Allison’s Restaurant seemed to win her heart. Our best meal was by far at Ocean Restaurant, which was perched in a beautiful beach house inn just up from Walker’s Point, the compound of the Bush family. There’s a wildness, a ruggedness about Maine, that always inspires me, and the juxtaposition of a sophisticated cocktail overlooking the rough, turbulent ocean on a stormy night couldn’t get more dramatic. It was also lovely to talk to my mom like we were just two friends out to catch up, even though I see her every day in summer because our summer cottages are side by side.

I’m doing some book research on this trip too, but I can’t say what because I want my next, next book to be a surprise. My daughter got a little weepy the night before we dropped her off. I told her that sometimes daddy and I fall asleep holding hands, and I offered to hold hers as we drifted off. It did the trick and she slipped off in a deep sleep. The next morning she bounced in her seat as we drove into the entrance of her happy place, her lake front summer camp.

“You realize that this is an incredible gift, right? To go to camp in Maine and be in nature like this for two weeks.”

She nodded, smiling. “I love it here.”

Satisfied, we hugged goodbye, and she shooed me away from her returning friends. When my mom and I went back to Kennebunkport that night, I found a super super super soft dark green sweatshirt. It has a single pine tree and a simple sentence so compelling that I couldn’t help but buy it.

“I like it here,” it reads, the pine tree serving as the “I” in the word “like”. Not exactly what my daughter said but darn close. Doesn’t everyone, I thought?