On Mother’s Day I left my wife and mother of our five children behind and headed off from Charleston to Maine for a reunion with my four siblings. It wasn’t planned that way but my wife opted out of making the trip and I flew off totally oblivious to what was happening in New England. By Tuesday, after almost three days of rain, the papers reported the area was having the third worst rain storm since they began keeping records back somewhere in the middle of the nineteenth century. In our home town of Lowell, MA, about 3,000 people were evacuated from homes along the banks of the Merrimack River. Only the 1936 flood that caused the Merrimack to overflow its banks and put much of Lowell under water was worst than last week's rain storm.
We gathered in Wells Beach, ME, and had a grand time. One brother, coming by car from Staten Island, was unable to get to the reunion because of the weather. He was missed, and we told him by phone that we faulted him for all our youthful misfortunes. Somehow, although he was only three or four, we said he caused an older brother to fall off the top of a bridge across a canal near our home. Similarly, in his absence, he was at fault when a bus threw a board up from the street breaking a sister’s leg. He accepted all this with good humor, although I suspect when he got to yakking it up later with his friends we would be somehow responsible for his youthful injuries and ailments.
I had planned to stop in on a few friends and e-mail acquaintances unannounced but once on the ground in Maine the weather made all that impossible. Maybe some day soon.
This was the first time we got together since our mother died four years ago. Families get caught up in what they do and times passes ever so swiftly, especially, it seems, as people age. I suggested the gathering last December and it turned out to be a happy time for catching up, reminiscing, updating on the kids whereabouts and accomplishments, and discussing future plans. We ate a lot of fresh fish, especially haddock and lobster. Fresh cold water fish is the best eating, I believe, and difficult to come by in South Carolina. My sisters had some fig squares, also not readily found in Charleston, when I arrived and to take home with me. I ate them in the airports at Portland, LaGuardia and Raleigh Durham. None made it to Charleston.
It was a good time for all and although about 12 inches of rain fell on Wells Beach during the storm we minded it not a wit. After all, we four on hand had survived the ’36 flood.
